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Another empty log truck swept by in the storm, spraying me and my 50-pound backpack with a dirty rain as I trudged north on the shoulder of U.S. 101, a rural two-lane road in this part of Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
In starting out on a walk across the good old U.S. of A, I had expected the noise of the road, the weariness, the grit on the face, the cold meals, the scurrying footsteps and chomping sounds outside my tent at night, the fretting over whether my slingshot would chase off a bear, the bad dream in which thieves corner me on some forgotten field in Montana and discover the $3,000 hidden inside my money belt.
What did surprise me is how quickly I came to resent the sight of evergreen trees. That and the rumor that I was walking through the territory of a wild bunch of motorcyclists who had just had the crap beat out of them by some loggers and were looking for a way to vent some steam.