not 12 miles

The walk from the Exit 151 campground (two days' camping for FREE!) to the town of Boardman (Exit 164) was a bit more than thirteen miles. Most of the walk actually went quite well for me: since my week-long stay in Arlington, I'm back to using two trekking poles, and like a Venetian gondoliere, I use the poles to push myself along at a faster pace than I can muster without them.

So I was able to maintain a decent clip for most of the distance, but I did have to rest three times-- twice for about forty minutes, and the final time (at the Mile 161 rest stop) for about an hour.

I lost $1.50 in one of the rest stop vending machines; not having eaten a bite in nearly three days, I had punched "F8" in the hopes of getting a danish. The coil in which the danish was trapped obediently rotated to let my prize out... the danish tipped forward... and then it stopped in mid-lean like a fearful diver. I stared, exasperated but unsurprised, at my quarry. The vending machine was shielded by an enormous blue cage to prevent exactly the sort of violence I was thinking of unleashing; because of the cage and because I was in a public space, I simply walked away.

Strangely enough, when I checked the machine almost an hour later, no one had come by to claim the danish. Had they put in their own $1.50, they might have gotten two pastries for their trouble.

The sight of Exit 164, Boardman, came as a relief. It had been a long, hot day of rushing cars, honking trucks, and little brown grasshoppers leap-flying everywhere. My knee was holding up, but I could feel that it wasn't going to last much longer, and I knew that after two days in the bush I wanted a motel.

The town has at least three motels; two are on the side of the exit closer to the river, and the third is on the opposite side (to the right, from my eastbound perspective). I called the front desk of one of the riverward motels; they were full up. Not seeing many vehicles at the nearer hotel, the one on the right, I limped over to it and booked a room for two nights. At 50-some dollars, it's not a bad deal.

All my clothes are in desperate need of laundering, but I'll take care of that in the morning. Tonight, it's all about resting the knee, which after two hours became so painful that I could barely put any weight on it. Funny how it was obedient all day, but let go as soon as I stopped walking.

So, tomorrow: laundry, painkillers, get a new grill lighter, see whether the town has a sporting goods shop, and perhaps grab a decent meal. I limped over to the nearest Shell station earlier in the evening and got two microwaveable burritos, but I think I'll scarf down some real food tomorrow.

A word about water treatment: despite precautions, I think some surviving microorganisms got happy in the Sunday heat: toward the end of the walk to Boardman, my stomach was starting to feel funny from swallowing the filtered river water in my Camelbak. Perhaps I should have invested in a UV Steri-Pen (earlier, I noted why I decided against it), but a cheaper solution may be, as one commenter suggested, to go with chlorine or iodine tablets. I remember using iodine tabs in Switzerland; they make the water taste horrible, but probably do kill all the critters.

Now I need to take a fistful of aspirin and get to bed. It's after 2AM, and I have to wake up before housekeeping barges in.


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