Gotta be in Spokane

A story I’m telling from early in my trip.My friend Scott and I rode on a hilly and grueling route from Chelan, Washington to Grand Coulee Washington. We pushed ourselves to the absolute physical limit. We looked so bad that as I posted in a previous section, the owner of the Pizza shop decided we didn’t have to pay and we opted for a hotel over a campground that night that we had not planned on.I remember laying in bed thas night Ithinking it would be difficult to bike eighty three miles the next day and mentally considered options to get to Spokane besides biking. I had not fully recovered overnight and the first twenty three miles was very hilly. We pulled into in the little town of Wilbur Washington with sixty five miles left to go. My body told me I was done biking for the day and I started planning how to get to Spokane.Scott had enough energy and felt okay to finish the ride. So he took off and I stayed behind in this town.I decided if I was gonna hitchhick the 65 miles, it was gonna be safer if I had a nice sign to hold up and if I stood in town where the traffic was slow. So I went into a flower shop and asked if they could make a sign for me saying,”Need riide to Spokane”. The lady working in the flower shop thought my request was a little unusual but.Agreed to do it Of course it would be better if we made it a little pretty by adding a couple balloons, and a strand of wheat on the sign. She also told me that it would be best to stand right outside this burger shop on the edge of town. Off I went with the sign to the burger shop, had a burger first and then sat by the road with my bike and the sign. I sat there for thirty minutes and watched many pick up trucks with lots of room zoom past me. Then a woman with a smaller vehicle stopped and said she could give me a ride forty of the sixty five miles, would that be okay. I accepted enthusiastically and I would figure out the last 25 miles of either biking myself or getting another ride. I took off my bike wheels and crammed them into her car and off we went. I found out that she was a house cleaner as well as a herbalist, growing her own herbs to make medicinal tinctures. We had a wonderful conversation and she was very interested in my ride details. She took me as far as she could go and then let me out by the side of the road and I continued on to next town 10 miles away. I stopped by the side of the road and was considering what to do next, when a car pulled up, rolled down its window, and the driver of the car asked me, *Are you the gentleman biking to spokane?* When I confirmed that I indeed I was he announced. *My mom told me to find you on the road and give you a ride to spokane* It ends up stephanie had discovered her son was driving to spokane, and told him to find me and give me a ride the rest of the way. So thanks to Stephanie and her family. I was sitting in our hotel, now what was Scott’s story. He biked 40 of the 60 miles and had a flat tire that he simply could not fixafter several attempts so he also hitchhiked with his bike to our hotel and got a ride from a gentleman in a truck within mi minutes.We were now fully able to celebrate our shared portion of my cross country bike trip with a nice dinner. I got to send him home on a plane and he sent me on the rest of my trip.