So I made it to the hotel in Spokane at 12:28 a.m. PT Saturday, the end of a 12-hour, three-time-zone odyssey that began in 60-degree Maryland and ended in “minus-one degree centigrade” (as the pilot announced) Washington state.
From what I’ve seen so far, Spokane is extremely average.
There’s buildings, people, snow, food, mountains in the distance. Really nothing too exciting.
But anyway here are some highlights from the trip (in chronological order, and written in the present progressive tense):
1. Watching a man pumping gas at the Exxon Station on Route 1 frantically trying to get the gas pump out of his car. Apparently it was stuck.
2. Sitting in Row 5 on the plane from BWI to Minneapolis, smelling the roasted chicken and vegetable ravioli being served a row in front of me in first class, and declining the five-dollar snack box offered to passengers sitting in coach.
3. Trying out the high-powered hand driers in the bathroom at the Minneapolis airport. Noting with approval that my hands were actually fully dried by a hand drier.
4. Sitting, completely by chance, next to Laura Harper’s brother, Will, and his girlfriend on the plane from Minneapolis to Spokane. They slept most of the time.
5. Reading the prologue and first 97 pages of “Survival Pending Revolution: The History of the Black Panther Party” on the plane.
6. Discovering there was a free shuttle from the Spokane airport to the hotel, allowing me to avoid standing in the snow and minus-one degree centigrade temperatures to wait for a taxi.
7. Sharing said shuttle with flight crews from Southwest and Republic Airlines, and listening to them intensely compare hotel accomodations in Spokane, Portland, Columbus, Chicago and Dallas…
Anyway, the Terrapin women’s basketball team plays Vanderbilt tonight in the Sweet 16 at 6 p.m local time, 9 p.m. back East.
I’ll be there.
schimmeldbk@gmail.com