June/n/1980 From the lake at Coeur d'Alene to hot springs in Oregon

Came the dawn and with it that momentary confusion of not knowing where I was and all the accompanying strangeness of being in an unfamiliar place, and then as the sleep left my eyes and brain I looked around me, seeing the lake flashing in the early sun, leaves and branches rustling above me, heard songbirds greeting the day, a cheerful cacophony of melodies, grinned and had the feeling it was going to be an auspicious day.

Although every morning was in a different place, the action was similar. Roll up my sleeping bag, find clean socks and underwear, pack my green bag, hoist it by its long strap onto my shoulder and look for a cafe, to clean up and break my fast. Only difference this morning was the need to find a laundromat after breakfast … my wardrobe was not only pretty grubby, it didn’t smell too good either.

The town was small and friendly, with a population that was then only around twenty thousand or so, and was defined by the large and beautiful lake, which stretched for about thirty miles, surrounded by forested hills. After breakfast and laundry, I walked back to the peninsula, determined to stash my bag, which I was sick of forever carrying around on my shoulder, and which also advertised the fact of my vagrancy. The sun rose higher, the morning became warmer, and I searched for a spot to stay in that was a bit further away from the path than the one on which I had spent the night. I found a place on a tiny little animal trail, close by a rocky escarpment that looked out over the lake. Aha! Very auspicious indeed! I hid my bag in the undergrowth, and walked back to the town, intent on buying postcards and finding a cheap restaurant for my evening meal. I was tired of eating grilled cafe food, usually cheap invariably greasy and nutritionally dubious.

And so I spent another day aimlessly wandering around another town in another state, wondering just what I was really doing, just what the point of this seemingly pointless exercise really was, and the auspiciousness of the day began to pall. By late afternoon I was in a restaurant come bar, eating like it was the Last Supper, and was joined by two girls, friendly, chatty and warm. Aha, thinks I, maybe things are getting auspicious after all. The evening developed into drinking, tall tales, much laughter, many questions and several answers, relating to travels, Merrie Olde England, music and all the usual suspects until I finally staggered out of the restaurant, late into the night, madly loaded. And alone.

I awoke in my sleeping bag, a crashing hangover, in severe pain, with no memory of having walked back from the town. My face throbbed. Evidently I had fallen, probably several times, as I had staggered back to my camp. I checked my pocket for my passport. Gone. My money belt was still around me and still had my precious bills in it. Dimly I recalled showing the girls my passport …why, I had no idea. They had obviously grabbed it in the drunken mayhem. Who they were, and where they lived was anyone’s guess. Gloomily I struck camp and painfully walked into town. Cleaned up in a cafe, and saw my face, bloodied and swollen. My hips hurt. Found last night's restaurant, which was just opening. Nope, no passport had been turned in the night before. There was no-one there who had been on duty the night before. Nope, they had no idea who the girls might be … a lot of tourists in this town this time of year. No, they were local, I started to say, but then realised the folly, the stupidity of it all. So much for auspiciousness. God, what a fool I had been.

Well, one fast move or I was a dead man. Time to get out of town, enough of this aimless hanging around, time to seriously head for the coast, no ifs, no buts, no dawdling.

Back towards 90, walking along through what looked to be a fine gray powder, in places an inch or two thick. Remarking on it to landscape workers I passed, they told me it was from Mt St Helens, the volcano that had blown a few weeks ago. I got a couple of short rides, and each time I got out the dust seemed thicker. Must have been unbelievable the day it happened, thick clouds of gritty fine pulverised rock descending on the land, blowing drifting choking clogging insinuating its way into everything from swathes of clothing, with no real harm done, to closely machined engines where the potential harm would be pretty darn bad, to delicate tissues of lungs where the damage could be catastrophic. Jeez, how many cigarettes would a few lungfuls of pumice equal? On the land itself, however, it was just another layer of soil, an added mineral, one more minor chapter in the endless story of the planet.

A pick-up pulled over, and the guy said: “I’m going to Seattle - jump in.”

He was in his sixties, fat, unhealthy looking and was going to get his boat and go fishing for a few days. Within minutes he had told me all about his boat, his plans and invited me along to go fish with him. All the while he was telling me this, he was pulling from a flask, and I realised how loaded he was. In my hungover state the last thing I wanted was a drink, and the next to last thing I wanted was to be driven by a drunk, but the one thing I really did want was to get to Seattle, and after about twenty or thirty miles I had persuaded him to let me drive. I had no intention of going fishing, but every intention of getting to the coast as soon as possible and in one piece at that. Fairly soon, he had passed out and I settled in behind the wheel, the first time I had driven in the US apart from a few miles in Atlanta during rush hour, which had been a wee bit scary. This was plain sailing by comparison. Wide two-lane highway, little traffic, a beat-up old truck that nevertheless purred in a rattly kinda way. My kind of driving.

Radio tuned to a country station for a while, then the signal was lost, and I turned the dial to find another station. For miles the only station I could find I was hosted by religious maniacs, touting the end of the world, which apparently might just be avoided if money was sent to such and such an address. In America, even the Apocalypse can be bought off. A station from Seattle came in, playing jazz and jumping blues, and the last hours just grooved on by.

What with a stop or two, it was close to midnight by the time we hit Seattle. I had handed the wheel back to the fisherman by then, and he drove through a lonely deserted industrial part of town headed to the docks where his boat was. His loquaciousness was gone, he was probably feeling just like I had at the beginning of the day, and he no longer badgered me to go out on his boat with him. He dropped me sometime after midnight on an empty road and disappeared into the Pacific night. So here I was, finally on the coast, but still couldn’t see the sea. Indeed, all I could see were warehouses, lots fenced in by rusting corrugated steel sheets, and wet pot-holed streets, puddles glinting with blue oily sheens under occasional street lights.

Oh lord, where the hell am I going to rest my weary body tonight? I disconsolately walked the forsaken streets, hoping for a break in the environment, a park perhaps, even just a bench. Nada, nothing. Behind me a car approached and I instinctively put out my thumb. To my astonishment, it stopped, and the window rolled down. “Looking for a place to stay?

Such a question, from a total stranger, at one in the morning in such weird circumstances would normally be very odd, to a normal person anyway, but I didn’t care. I just wanted somewhere warm to spend the night. And so it was I spent the night at this guy’s pad. Turned out he had a furniture refinishing business similar to the one old friends of mine had back in England, so I had a decent idea of what it was he did. He also had a supply of amyl nitrate, and spent a couple of hours turning me on and then trying to seduce me - oh Jesus, how many more times was this going to happen? I just wanted to go to sleep on his soft and cozy couch. He finally gave up and a few hours later roused me - he was off to work and could drop me a hip little cafe on the way.

As pleased as I had been to have a place to stay, I was equally pleased to see the back of him and walk into the cafe, which was, as he had promised, a hip little place. Bought a coffee, and looked at the notice board by the counter. Among the ads for fortune-tellers, apartments for rent, lost dogs and moving services was a flyer from a company calling itself Grey Rabbit, advertising cheap bus trips to San Francisco and Los Angeles. I saw the next trip was leaving Seattle in one hour's time and excitedly asked the counter clerk where the departure place was.

“Oh, it’s about half an hour from here. Wow - you just might make it. Shall I call you a cab?’”
“Oh yes please, yes please, my good friend, that would be great.”
And so it was … a cab arrived, I gave him the destination, and forty minutes later I was deposited at a parking lot inhabited by a couple of dozen travellers, most of ‘em patchouli-scented hippies. I talked with a young woman who turned out to be English. She was going to San Francisco. I told her I needed to get to the British Embassy to get a new passport, and she laughed as I told her my tale of woe.
“You’ll have to go to LA - can’t do it in San Francisco. I know, because I had to do the same thing a few weeks ago.”

A couple of minutes later an old bus pulled in, and a few minutes after that, we boarded it. There were no seats, just wall to wall mattresses. We were given a little talk before leaving.

“There is to be no smoking of tobacco. You can smoke anything else of course.”

Also some story about us all being part of a group of friends on an outing, rather than passengers on a for-hire bus. The entire operation was, of course, flying well under the radar as far as the authorities were concerned. No licenses, probably no insurance, and definitely no cares.

We rumbled off down the highway, and the Englishwoman and I fell into a deep conversation. Her name was Jan and it had been a long time since I had spoken with someone from the old country, and it was relaxing to talk about our experiences and impressions of America, its customs and weirdnesses, foibles and eccentricities. By our standards anyway. Joints were passed up and down the length of the bus and the air became thick and pungent, the various conversations relaxed and dreamy, punctuated by smiling silences.

Sometime into the night, and I think it was around southern Oregon, we pulled off the highway and parked next to a river and some hot springs. We all took off our clothes and frolicked in the hot water in the moonlight, splashings, giggles and soft murmurs under the stars.

One by one we returned to the bus, several still naked, and the bus returned to the highway, rolling towards California with couples under blankets and in sleeping bags, the bus filled with murmuring words of love, whisperings and pantings, and small groans of ecstasy. All underwritten by the sound of rolling rubber, sighs, bangs and clatterings from the suspension and the sounds and vibrations of the ever-shifting transmission. A sixty mile an hour orgy, although there didn’t appear to be any partner swapping. Jan and I cuddled in my sleeping bag, conversing in the sweet and silent language of touch by fingers and tongues, toes and noses, warmth and affection in the roaring speeding night.