The lights on the Dalles dam glowed red white and blue all
night long.The large flag painted on the powerhouse is
kinda like the one on a Union Pacific Locomotive. Maybe its painted by the same
person. Or they got the pattern at paint a flag dot com.
All that patriotism
only made me think that our national legacy will be the destruction of all the
things that keep humans alive, oh and war.
I rode on downstream to Hood River and roamed around for a
while thinking aboot where I should go next. I settled on going to Astoria so as to then be
able to ride the entire Oregon, and part of California coast.
I needed to get back to Washington to do this, and it just
so happened there was a bridge nearby. I headed towards it, and when I
committed to going over this bridge, I learned that this was a toll bridge.
Hood River – White Salmon Interstate Bridge
I pulled off a glove
and reached in my pocket cuz I knew there were several dollar bills in there for just
this type of situation, only I was wearing the new jacket I picked up in
Spokane and there were no dollar bills in the pocket.
I did the only thing you can do in this situation when there
is no fast track lane, I pulled up to
the toll booth, tried not to slip on the oil, and told the attendant that this
will take me a minute as my pocket book was in my pocket, and I hadn’t been
able to pull it out shuffling up to the toll gate.
She was in no hurry, and I fumbled around and pulled out a
$20.00 She said don’t you have anything smaller, and I replied I have a
Canadian $20.00
The toll apparently for motor bikes was only $1.00, and she
handed me back two stacks of $1.00-dollar bills that were paper-clipped together.
She was obviously saving them for just this type of situation. I should have
counted my change but decided that keeping traffic waiting any longer probably
wasn’t a good idea, so I stuck everything in my jacket pocket zipped it up and floored
it.
The toll gate experience was pretty special, but I have to
get my pal Daisy Corn to ride this bridge because as soon as you leave the toll
booth in Hood River the surface all the way to Washington is metal grate.
Daisy doesn’t like metal decks much. They don’t bother me except when the traffic is moving at 10 miles per hour and I am trying to
keep a 900-pound motor bike going.
I always like to look down and see the water
and when I did that, I discovered that my favorite glove, well only the right
one was now clinging to my jacket via some Velcro.
Briefly I thought aboot stopping and putting my glove back
on, but the giant pick up truck behind me was very close, and so I carried on
thinking that if my favorite right glove did become detached, that it would fly
off down to the river and become lodged in a turbine causing a power outage for
at least two states. That made losing a favorite glove worth while.
At the end of the bridge a traffic light afforded time
enough to connect my hand with its glove, and then a left turn back on to
highway 14 and low and behold something to photograph but hardly a place to
pull over.
Oregon's Mount Hood
Incidentally the mountain was named by Lt. William Broughton who was a member of Captain Vancouver's discovery expedition. He named it for Samuel Hood who was a British Admiral
White Salmon is a tributary to the Columbia and the site of
the White Salmon hatchery. It was the first place on the river that smelled like
fish.
Little did I know I was to have a Big Foot sighting just a
few miles down the road, and it was time for a break anyway, so I pulled up and
ordered an espresso.
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