Manifest Destiny: America from the Bottom Up - Day 26 - Crafton, PA to Bridgeville, PA - Knots and More Cemetery Accomodations

I slept like the dead (sorry, I had to say it), until I heard stomping right next to me. I rolled over to see a six point buck. He started barking at me. I couldn't believe how loud it was. Scared the shit out me. I looked around and noticed something I hadn't seen when bedding down. I was sleeping right in the middle of a deer trail, not a human trail. I was afraid he'd attract people to the area, so tried to shoo him off, thinking he'd just run away. Not a chance.

He stepped closer, calling my bluff. I was like, "Okay, big boy, maybe we can talk this over..." He was having none of it, and lowered his head. I stood up slowly and grabbed all my stuff, crumpled up the tarp and slunk backwards a little way into the woods. Wasn't good enough. He stomped and stepped forward again. That was it, man! With my pack half on, and the tarp under my arm, I slowly retreated out to the roadside, where I got my shit together and continued on my walk. Looking back, I noticed that he was sniffing the ground where I had been. Lesson from that day: Respect the strength and resolve of deer.

The temperature was about 33 degrees F when I was rudely awoken, but I had been cozy and warm until then in my sleeping bag. This coming night would be similar, but a bit colder and I thought it might be due to rain.

I knew it would be a rough day. I had $3 in my wallet. No contribution money had come into my savings account yet from PayPal (I was waiting for over $100), due to it being a Sunday. Interestingly, I had $21.70 in that account, but ATM fees here were $2.50-$4.00!, so no dice there. I had tried to get a Visa/MasterCard debit card through PayPal so that I could withdraw money directly without transferring to my business savings, but they turned me down.

The first thing I needed was something to drink. I walked to a CVS. unfortunately it didn't open until 8:00 am. I thought they might also have a less expensive ATM machine. Standing around and just sitting in the parking lot for a couple of hours, I tried to get online by piggybacking on several signals. I had no idea where I was. If I could have looked at Google Maps I would have been able to chart my way westward. I still had the impression that if I could get a bit more money, maybe I could take a bus across the border and through Ohio. It was only about 15 miles to the border.

Nothing worked about trying to get online, so I called it quits and stowed the laptop away before it ran out of power. Then I just sat, bored. No one was a round. The place gave the impression of a post Zombie apocalypse. I nodded a bit, still tired. I probably would have slept a bit longer if that deer hadn't bullied me out of the cemetery. I must have drifted to sleep for a while, because the next thing I heard was a car door slamming. It was the CVS worker arriving to open up the store. she was very late. It was about 8:20 am. I pulled my shit together and tried and assumingly as possible to join her in the doorway. I didn't want to scare her with my odd appearance.

Thankfully she was a very nice lady. She apologized for being late. She'd got a call to come in on her day off when another employee had called in sick. She said he was probably hung over. I bought a large lemonade. This left me about $1. They did have an ATM but it charged $3. My money was tantalizingly near, but ever out of reach. If I hadn't been so used to being disappointed with my financial situation, I think I would have gotten quite depressed. But, I kept a stiff upper lip. I asked the lady if there was a McDonald's anywhere around. she laughed heartily and said that this CVS was the only store in town. I asked if she was serious. She nodded, "You have to go Bridgeville if you want any other amenities." I asked how far away Bridgeville was and of course she told me in driving time, "...oh, a little less than 10 minutes." I did the math. That was about 5 miles.

Asking for basic directions, I was told that the important thing was to find Route 50, then follow it south through Carnegie and Heidelberg until I run into Bridgeville. I thanked her and headed off. I had to retrace some of my steps from the night before, skirting around the bus route this time, until I hit the intersection with Route 50.

I finally made it to the McDonald's in Bridgeville. The walk was unspectacular. It was dreary and drizzly. With my last $1 I bought a coffee and sipped it for hours while I worked online. The frustration of having no resources was getting to me. I searched Google Earth for anything resembling a sleep spot. Everything outside was wet. I actually found myself wishing it would just snow instead of rain. I wasn't going to get a break. And, I was slowly wearing out my welcome at McDonald's. A businessman with a suit and tie nursing a coffee all day is not a problem. But a strange unshaved traveler, hauling around 8 tons of shit was just kind of an eye sore. I knew it and they were patient with me.

What really began to concern me was that the night after this one was going to be brutally cold, at 15 degrees F. Can't sleep outside in that without some kind of real tent. And, the night after was going to be nearly as cold.

There was a system that people were calling the Polar Vortex here at the end of the year. I had been running just ahead of it, but now it was going to overtake me. It was really going to become a huge problem. I'd spoken about getting across Ohio and Indiana as soon as possible. But now, I realized the only way to Missouri was going to be heading north by train to Chicago and then down to St. Louis. Unbelievably, Amtrak has no direct western route from Pittsburgh, and the bus was too expensive to do. The judicious thing to do now was to stick just outside (within 15 miles) Pittsburgh in case I need to get back into the Amtrak station. I was still in the metropolitan area and there was a bus that ran into the city several times a day from Bridgeport.

Everything was twisting into knots. And, I wasn't particularly good with untying them. I'm a fairly good writer, an apt walker and a hardy camper (at this point)... But, an administrative assistant? I am not--at least not with everything else I have to deal with.

The stress was palpable and was causing my iritis to flare up a bit in my left eye. I was almost out of blood pressure medication and had no idea if my doctor was send a prescription this far out of state. I couldn't imagine what I would be experiencing with no metoprolol in situations like this. I had to break it all down to one thing at a time and just nibble a way that problems without trying to process all of them at once.

I decided then and there to definitely get an Amtrak from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Somehow spend the night there--maybe a day too if it was warm enough--there was one particular place that would be interesting to visit for me. Then, take a train to St. Louis, to meet up with my friend RhonnaLeigh in Missouri and stay with her for a few days, OR take a tangent trip to Minnesota to meet up another friend. I didn't even know if that was possible yet, but it would be the only chance on this journey that I would have to see her. I had a a standing invitation from her.

If I were to take the first option, there was a good chance the Polar Vortex would not reach me as I headed south down the west side of the Mississippi River.

Looking way ahead, after Missouri, I would be off to New Mexico somehow to visit another friend. But even though that would likely be less than a month from now, it might as well be a million years. The present moment is all I had time (or the psychological energy) to think about as the sun was going down. Ironically, I saw out the window that there really had been no sun on this day anyway. It was a raw, skim-milk sky as dark as 4:00 pm all day. And, now it was passing 4;00 pm--growing darker by the minute.

with all of this concern about taking other forms of transportation, staying in motels when the weather got dangerous, etc, I began to rethink the wallking paradigm I'd established. I thought about it like this...

Obviously taking trains and buses is not walking. But if it is indeed the JOURNEY and meeting the good people of the US along the way, that must be the mission. Then, any way of doing it is fair game. Even if the temp was adequate I can't see myself walking 500 miles across corn fields, dotted with tiny farms--that misses the point too.

I can't just rent motel rooms all the time. Hostels are a good idea, but that means getting to wherever they are (a few may work out). It just isn't practical walking 20 miles just to spend one night for $25. Shelters are a no-go. I'm philosophically opposed to taking a bed away from someone who can't help needing it. Also, those locations pose the same issue as the hostel thing.

One alternative if I have no money is to pretty much stay up all night if the temps are in the teens and do the doorway to doorway thing, getting booted by the cops. Faking that I need to use ATM's and hanging in those small areas as long as possible--until again getting booted or arrested. I don't exactly look like a Wall Street banker. To tell you the truth, if it came down to freezing to death or being arrested, I would use a night in jail as a way of surviving.

There is the option of staying with friends I know, if they happen to be nearby. But I'm not imposing any two hour drives on people, just to come back to the place where I was picked up. It is a waste for them and gets me nowhere besides out of the cold for 10 hours. There really wouldn't even be time for us to visit except during the car ride. The Protector did drive down when I was in Rhode Island, as you may recall, and took me to Connecticut. But that was a special situation and it set me up to be able to handle most of what I face out here.

So, maybe you are beginning to see some of the density of the knot I was trying to examine?

To keep things as logistically simple I am going to rely on trains and motel rooms for the next couple weeks, walking to where I need to use them, etc. Meeting people is no problem. I can't keep them off me, because of the gear and the story behind it. Sometimes it gets to be too much. This balancing act is rough, but it is part of the whole experience...THE journey.

The West Coast may be the destination and the mission may be the journey and its people. But the project seems to have become all of ours (the ones participating). It is a lesson in cooperation between friends: wise investments, efficient travel, safety in respect to the weather. We are ALL truly along for the ride now.

All of that is wonderful!

The only thing that I wish I had more of a chance to do was write. That is why the Facebook entries are becoming so important as a log. When I really do get an opportunity to get more blog posts up, I will feel better about keeping up my part of the bargain and add to future book material.

Trains could help feed several birds with one seed (as my sister Deb says). These long runs often go over night. That means time to write at stations and on the train; plus, no motel stay required. Of course the time going west is shortened as well.

The train trip the day before was supposed to be for writing, but very little got done due to Amtrak's sometimes spotty WiFi and some glitches that are growing in my laptop, along with planning my route out of Pittsburgh which went off without a hitch (for once!). Plus, for much of the time I just wanted to ride and look out the window.

A big personal goal of mine is to see and experience the southwest, the desert especially and do some camping - or in my case, surviving - out there. So, the sooner I can get there, the better.

As for California. That's just going to be a great reward. I have plenty of friends out there and I plan to drink deeply of the spirit of the state, before going all the way to Oregon and Washington and then returning, probably by plane (something I have to start saving for, in escrow) to my beloved Maine and my cat, Buddy, to begin a new life.

If the Great Spirit wills it, maybe I will have been able to set up a way of building my self-sustaining property and get to work devoting the rest of my life making a material difference in the lives of people who really need it by coming up with some kind of inexpensive low income housing, like I was planning to do before having to leave Maine.

But that whole pipe dream in the last few paragraphs was a distant and still-fictional time in the future. On this night it was back to survival mode. And who knew what the hell would happen tomorrow, and in the next few days and weeks?

The best place to spend the night appeared to be the town cemetery; the second one in as many days. I left McDonald's, broke and uncertain, but trying to force all the other issues out of my head, to just focus on the task at hand. It was a short walk further down Route 50, where I took a left on Washington Pike, then after making sure no one was looking, I snuck through a gap in the cemetery gate and up the hill to explore.

Near the southern edge there was a drop off. But a flat spot just behind several large tombstones looked like it would fit the bill. The Spark seemed to agree. now, with a light rain starting up again, I tied one end of the tarp to a tree, and for the first time had something more like a classic tent to climb into.

I had left the head end lose so that I could pull the edges in and close it completely. The foot end was tied with a bungee cord, tightly and secured with another line to a tree adjacent to the first tree. With my light, I checked for leaks. It appeared that the angles were just right. I was worried about condensation building up, but what else could I do? I needed to stay dry as long as possible. Keeping the rain out was the way to do that, even at the expense of waking in the morning with the "rain" of condensation coming in. I wrapped the laptop in a dry plastic bag and pushed it under my raincoat for extra protection. Then I was able to roll out the sleeping bag, take of my pants and climb in. It was warm and dry. Being in that sleeping bag was the highlight at the end of each of these stressful days. I fell asleep to the sound of an increasing downpour...

Bridgeville Sleeping Place.