When Rick hooked me and Nate up with a ride to Spokane, no one was more excited than his son, our driver, William.   William bubbled like a Yellowstone geyser, maybe at the chance to leave Idaho ever so briefly, but more likely because he hadn’t seen characters like us in quite some time.   “When I’m older I want to be like you guys” he ventured early in the ride. He was 20 years old, born and bred of the west, though a relatively recent emigrant of Idaho, which he considered dull, except for the lake parties in the summer.   He was as earnest as they come, but also easily twisted around- when I asked him for a cool music venue, he started stuttering about Mapquest and lost track of what city we were talking about.  But he pursued. “Mapquest is great- you just put in your address and then it tells you where it is.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Google Maps left Mapquest behind several years ago.

We tried to get his read on Spokane, a city that Nate and I knew absolutely nothing about.  After running through the basics, he turned cautious.  “Just be careful. I want you to be safe. There’s a lot of weird people out there.”

“How are they weird?”

William took a deep breath.  “Man, they’ll come up to you, and just start talking to you. Especially at night, they’ll come up to you and just start talking to you about strange things.  And they’ll act like they’re your friends and all, but they aren’t your friends.”  The topic seemed to stress him out, so we let it go, and went back to William’s gentle narration “four exits to go…three exits to go…”

By the time he dropped us off he was having trouble determining his directions.  I told him the way back to Idaho was to make a right at the first road and take it straight.  In searching for right he began pointing at various directions, including the motel.  “Nah dude, just down the hill, and turn everything to the right at the light.” I hope he made it back all right.

I’ve never been so happy to just rest my bones as when I sprawled out in that Motel 6.  My duffel bag was packed to the brim with junk from the car, some of which was essential, like car paperwork and Hands On memorabilia, other was trashable, like a cordless charger that charged a specific type of cell phone one time for 60 minutes, in case you ever remembered in advance that your battery would be low, but weren’t going to be somewhere with an outlet.

For dinner we went to the only food option within walking distance from the Motel 6, a Mexican restaurant pumping loud Mexican music, where we were the only customers. The servings were huge, and we needed a power nap after.   I woke Nate up to Eric Cartman’s version of “Come Sail Away”, had a whiskey and coke, and prepared for the night.  That’s when we encountered the first of the Three Spokane Taxi Drivers.