Current location . . .

So I didn't go to Spokane after all. I got off the bus in Spokane, sleepy-eyed and having destroyed the zipper on my sleeping bag, as well as added a new layer of drool to it. There I was told that I could take the bus I was planning to take to somewhere in Montana (I forget the name, but it starts with a Ka) but that would involve a layover in Missoula from 10:40 p.m. to 8 a.m. And I did not feel like arriving in Missoula and choosing between spending the night in the Greyhound station and trying to find a hotel room at 11.

So I just got back on the bus I had gotten off, and in so doing confused the busdriver, and went back to sleep. Let us all be impressed by my ability to sleep at will. Now I've walked around Missoula in the rain and am currently in my pajamas with a fine selection of Safeway products to feed me and motel cable. There's glory for you.

At the breakfast stop in St. Regis, this punk kid said he was going to Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. He was going to start a business; his grandfather had just died -- he was a Marriot (the Marriot? the kid mumbled and I didn't like to ask) -- leaving half the money to the kid and half to the grandmother, but that until then the kid was flat broke.

He asked me where I was from. When I said L.A., he said he had spent some time there, mostly being homeless. He said it was hard to meet good people there, the good people were mostly the upper and middle class people "like you." But even the people of our class, he said, half were fake, they just wanted to use you.

He said he left home when he was 13 to bicycle through every state of the union, and he got done when he was 19. He seemed like a nice kid.