Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I drank two beers in a local roadhouse and dropped my bike off downtown to be
stored for the weekend at Allegro Cyclery, where I also bought some shoe inserts I was
told would ease the foot-burning problem I'd been having.
Afterward, I met Tom and his wife, Margo, an English professor at a local school,
Whitman College, who was about to retire, and we discussed what a relief it would be
for her not to have to grade—or even read—student essays anymore. I was hugely sym-
pathetic and pleased for her; in my twenties I taught junior high school and high school
English and had nightmares about being smothered by uncorrected papers.
We had dinner on the porch of their home on a leafy street; New Yorkers never lose
their amazement at leafy streets. The salad tomatoes and the dessert blueberries came
from their garden. Tom said that when I returned from L.A. he'd pick me up at the air-
port, I'd stay at their house for the night, and we'd take off on our bikes together the
next morning. Tom, it turns out, is one of those people, like me, who will use almost any
excuse to take a long ride. He had a couple of days to spare, he said, and knew a route
into the Palouse, a region of rolling hills and vast wheat fields in eastern Washington and
western Idaho, that he wanted to show me. I can't tell you how much I wished we could
get started right away.
At dawn the next morning, I got on a plane, and on the first leg of the trip, from Walla
Walla to Seattle, I was treated to a view of the snowy peak of Mount Rainier nosing
above the clouds as though I were on my way there, having been summoned to Olympus
to answer for one thing or another.
Sunday, July 31, Los Angeles
Billy died on Mick Jagger's birthday. Is that fitting? I don't know whether I'd say that,
but he did do the greatest Jagger imitation I ever saw—I even borrowed it—and they
were both terrific entertainers. In fact, I don't think I've ever known anyone more natur-
ally entertaining than our friend Bill. He wasn't really a storyteller and I can't remem-
ber him ever telling a joke, but he might have been the funniest guy I ever knew.
He had strange appetites; he was the only person over the age of eight that I ever saw
wash down chocolate cake with Coca-Cola. He could be sophisticated and adolescent in
the same sentence. He had an eccentric mind that traveled its own singular path, rarely
accommodated conventional wisdom, and, among other things, allowed him to express
anger, frustration, or bitterness with a pithy absurdity. A natural commentator, he was
rarely sarcastic but often deadpan. I remember a phone conversation we had at the be-
ginning of the Gulf War in 2003, when everyone—my liberal friends, anyway—was in
high dudgeon about the administration's dishonest tactics in persuading Americans that
an invasion was justified.
