Palouse Trip: Getting There by Jay

I think most of us create a vision of what the first day of a trip will look like.  Emily wanted us on the way to Pullman as soon as she was finished with school that day.  I had this vision of her wanting to walk out of the school, in true Hollywood fashion. ...As children run and scream in every direction, she walks through the middle, smiling (in slow motion of course, with her hair slightly blowing back), oblivious to the flying books, papers and well placed explosions.  She climbs into her lovers red convertible....

I had no red convertible, just an Astrovan with a bike rack and packed to camp. 

And now, from the outset, we are late.  The night before we are supposed to leave, I got sick.  This delayed our start one full day. We adjusted.

The drive was uneventful. We arrived at the Pullman RV Park and began getting things set up to make dinner.  Our new neighbor, Orville, came over, offered to help us move the picnic table and chatted me up while Emily was registering us.  I was reminded of something that I had forgotten.  I am not “well traveled” by most definitions, but I do have some experience in poverty travel.  A couple decades ago, my friend Sean and I left Boston on motorcycles heading for California.  By the time we reached Virginia Beach, we were still looking at the Atlantic Ocean, with empty pockets and a broken motorcycle.  We got a couple small loans from family to pay for the new clutch and then began working and scamming our way across the country.  A few times, we paid for our stay at campgrounds by doing some work for the camp host. 

For most people of means, camping is a vacation.  If you travel through the cheaper campgrounds, you get a different experience. For the folks Sean and I met, campgrounds were their homes.  Traveling through the south in November and December, we became well acquainted with the working homeless.  They had jobs, full-time jobs, and a campground was home.  Orville is in this category.  He and his wife had to shuffle about (often there is a limit on how many days in a row you can stay in a campground).  She works at Walmart, he is looking for work.  There are few jobs in Pullman that are not minimum wage.   My impression of him over the few times we interacted (always with him offering help) was that he was a man who needs a community, he needs to help out, he is a contributor.

Emily returned, we made dinner, cleaned up, got to bed in the back of the van, set our alarms, and tried to sleep.