Olympia and South Bend: Beautiful People

Cannon Beach wasn't so bad when we didn't need anything from it. So we left.

The coast was damp and dreary, like we expected. The next three days were spent heading up the coast and in to Olympia. There were numerous flat tires.

The ride was gorgeous.

We met a man just outside of South Bend, WA who retired and took off on his bike. He has since been living on the road. He rides around the country. Mostly the west, it seemed. When he gets tired of riding he walks--he was thinking about hiking the Pacific Coast Trail soon. He told us all kinds of stories while we ate our sandwiches--we had stopped at a camp ground to eat. He kept asking us to stay the night. And when we said we needed to keep going, that we were even thinking about hitching, he quickly ended the conversation.

Chuckling, we tried to figure out whether it was that we weren't staying or that we were thinking about hitching that turned him off to us. We still don't know.

We got into South Bend about night fall. On the outskirts of the town a kid called to us, we went over to say hello.

"What's up dude?"

"There's camping here for only five bucks. You guys can pitch your tents here if you want. I didn't even pay cause I only have cards."

"Oh. Ya? Well I think..."

"Ah. These mosquitoes are crazy. Crazy! They're all over me. Crazy!" He was screaming and slapping his legs and running around in circles. Then he stopped.

"So do you guys wanna stay? I could really use some company tonight. Ahhhhhhh! These crazy mosquitoes! They're all around! All over me! Ahhhhh! They're going to eat me alive!" The same slapping and dancing ensued. Now, granted, the mosquitoes were pretty bad. We were right beside a marsh of sorts. But even if we did put our tents up here, this kid was going to talk all night.

Come to find out the kid was 18. He had autism. He was riding from Canada to Mexico. His mother put him up to it. She forced him to do it, in his words.

"She said it would educate me about the world!" Wow. I thought I might do something like that to my son if I had the money. But even all that interesting info wasn't enough to overcome the screaming and dancing that seemed to pour out of this kid with consistency that would make molasses look irregular. He also mentioned he had ADHD.

We rode into town, hitched a ride with a really nice trucker, and camped illegally (for the last time on our trip) at a rest stop. It was nearly 1 a.m. before we got to sleep.

The next day we rode into Olympia. The guy we stayed with told us this story. I made him, said I had heard it from his mother:

"So I was at school at Olivet Nazarene. It was finals week of my senior year. (Every year everyone plays pranks during finals week. So this was my big idea.) Every year there's a big chapel service and it's like the final one of the year. So I wake up at like 3 a.m. and go hide on the roof of the chapel--well it's just under the roof in one of the air-conditioning vents. Cause if I would've gone another time campus security would've been all over me. So I hide in this vent from 3 till the service starts at 9 or so. And I have 4,000 firecrackers with me. My plan was originally to light off 1,000 in different spots on the roof and it would make lots of noise and disrupt the whole service. But laying in that air conditioning vent I figured I might as well leave a bunch in there. So about 10 I can hear--well, it turns out the president was giving the message--so I can hear the president wrapping up and I start the firecrackers. The only thing is, once I start the first strand they go off way faster than I expect. So I think to myself, well, I can run now and probably get away or I can just keep lighting them off and get caught. So I just keep lighting them off. And so all these firecrackers are going off and everyone in the chapel--it's this huge auditorium that seats a ton of people--is wondering what on earth is happening. And some of my friends are laughing and everything gets super disrupted. I guess the president handled it really well, like he was acting like he was playin the drum and stuff."

And this whole time Andy, Morgan and Matt aren't saying a word. Just listening, awestruck.

"And then all of a sudden the firecrackers that went off in the vent, the paper and stuff, starts coming through the vents in the chapel. And it looks like all this graffiti. And then the president starts to worry a bit and tells everyone to evacuate. And so I finished lighting them all off and run to the side of the roof and see that everyone's evacuated the building. And then I run to the other side and see the campus security. And I know I'm caught, just like I knew I would be. And so I just stay on the roof and wait for them to get up to me. And I shake their hand and introduce myself. I tell them I'm the one who did all this. And they were actually pretty cool about it. I just went and talked to the dean. They let me graduate and everything. But it cost me $8,000 because they had to clean out the air vents and the whole system."

We slept a little better than we would've that night.

"Now I hear sometimes people talk about me bringing a gun in and stuff. I guess the legend has just gone wild with the stories people tell now. It's crazy."

*It should be noted that this guy is a very successful Army officer now.