October 2

Not being bale to get to Baltimore today, having taken a wrong turn at Jarretsville, MA, I had to find a place to pitch my tent. I found a god one, on the grassy border of a soybean field, screened from the road by a 200' wide strip of woods. I dried out the tent and ate my supper, and was pitching the tent when two teenagers, one on a dirt bike and the other on an ATV, rode up on the field's perimeter road. They stopped and the kid on the dirt bike questioned my, a little aggressively, about what I was doing, where I had come from, etc. When he was leaving he said, "My Dad own's this field."

I finished pitching the tent, ate an orange, and got my gear off the bike and into the tent, worrying about the kid's dad. I figured the worst that could happen would be that he would show up at 6:00, when the sun would be setting, and tell me to get the hell off his land.

At six I was reading Elmore Leonard, still in my riding clothes, my rear into the tent and my feet on the ground outside, and Dad showed up, driving a new blue Dodge 4x4. I got up to greet him, and he said. Are you OK? Is everything alright?"

We talked for a bit, but he was in a hurry to get somewhere, and when he left he gave me a bottle of water and a Twinkie. "Just clean up after yourself," he said as he drove off. The kids rode by as I was writing this and gave me a wave.

I met two people this morning. I stopped at a crossroads restaurant for breakfast, and a kind, nearly crippled, fifty-five year-old, overweight and snaggle-toothed waitress took a deep interest in my sojourn and safety. So concerned that she warned me not to go into Washington D.C. alone. "It's full of blacks, you know. Nothing but blacks," she said.
An hour later as I was trying to find the entrance to a gas station, I met Ken. I would guess he is Korean or Japanese. The nice Greek lady at the Riverton Hotel told me about him, and she said he was Japanese, but I doubt that she asked or he volunteered. Ken is riding from Boston to Miami, and then is going to L. A. He prefers hotels to motels, and if he is packing a tent it is singularly small. But it could be, because Ken looks pretty agile. One of the reasons I bought the big heavy tent that I'm using is that it is hard for me to squirm around in small spaces. Ken offered to ride with me, but I declined. I would slow him down, embarrassingly. He's a nice guy, and having a good time, and I wish him well.