Sage Stage One

Waning Crescent Moon

Klamath Falls is great. I hope all of you get to spend some time there some day. The OC&E Rail Trail (the former Oregon, California, and Eastern Lines) extends almost one hundred miles toward Bend OR, old railroad track converted to hiking, biking, et cetera. Only the part nearest Klamath Falls is paved - the rest varies from gravel to dirt to rough scrabble. I rode about ten paved miles this morning after a Mini-Volcano breakfast at the Black Bear Diner.

Gazebos were abundant. I scored four in and around KF before it was time to load my bike on the Sage Stage shuttle to Alturas, CA. The best one by far was at the Veterans Memorial Park on the edge of town.

The bus ride was interesting, skimming over forested volcanic tableland marked by chocolate-colored buttes and ridges. Most of the trees looked like junipers or cedars to me, with taller jeffrey pines mixed in for good measure. Lots of horses and colts and lazy cattle.

The bus driver was nice, helping me with the balky rack and counting my two pairs of panniers as two pieces of luggage. She could have been a stickler and charged me for another ticket ($13.50), but she didn't.

The two other passengers were neurotic, nearly fossilized seventy-ish gals who had come into KF for a Walmart shopping spree. I have several female friends (and two beautiful sisters) who are five-to-ten years older than these two. But nobody I know is as screwed-up ancient and unhappy as them. Every single thing they said was negative. And non-factual. And bigoted. I transcended the whole thirty minutes of ugly conversation by projecting myself into the pastures and pretend-running with the wobbly baby horses. That was way more fun.

Eventually, the bus dumped the sad mad hussies off to their sad hussy homes and took me and the Dream Machine into Alturas, the humble seat of Modoc County.

I checked into the Hacienda Motel, possibly California's cheapest clean hostel. I like it here. The proprietress is a most friendly Thai American beauty queen without a bigoted bone in her body. She referred me to Nuch's Thai Restaurant around the corner for dinner. Yum!

Tomorrow I will finally get all the way to Carson City and I'll start my ride sometime Saturday morning. It's going to drop below 40° F here tonight, so I'm glad to be indoors.

Peace, Love, and Pad Meekow,
Jim