olympia to centralia....

smoothie move chaitanya

all american girl

olympia to centralia....
august 1st 2006
24.8 miles about 28 minutes by car/many hours by lazy bike rider
chaitanya broke out his high school "king of the river" flirting skills to get us all vegan berry smoothies from some little store in the middle of nowhere. Then we made it to centralia and stopped at a large fruit stand. Here we attempted to pull our "dont pay for anything" standard prcedure. The girl working there seemed to not be playing games and wasn't so fixed on giving us anything for free. So we sat down and started talking to each other taking rest under he shade. We asked her what she did, did she own the stand etc. Chaitanya bragged about our trip a bit and said that we were riding this far etc for peace. He bet she couldnt do the same ride. She responded quickly "actually i bet I could. Im all american." She was an all american pole vaulter just graduated from college a month back. We congratulated her and Chaitanya ate the fruit of his words. She appreciated sticking that to us. Then she brought us some really bad apricots, then some even worse cantelopes and then some avocados. We were grateful. I offered everything pulled out my knife and started to eat. Chaitanya was also eating but with his dirty gloves on. I couldnt believe he would stick those fingers in his mouth. She looked at us and asked How are the apricots. I responded, "taste like free apricots eaten out of dirty gloves". She laughed and asked where we were staying? We responded "at your house". She laughed, " i dont think so". After attending to some customers she came back and said "i can take you guys swimming. There is a really special swimming hole near by. Im about to close in a few minutes. You guys ride to my house and from there we can go swimming. Maybe my mom will be home. I have horses too." Before we left to her house, we met a really nice gentleman named Andre who was commuting from work on his bicycle. He was a city planner, in some small iny town. He was all alone and had no friends being new to the area and being a in a small town. He invited us to his house but it was in the wrong direction so we declined. Small towners are always anxious to meet interesting people. Not so much action in the middle of nowhere.