Repairing My Inner Friendship - Spokane.

As all proper journeys should begin, today started with Havana Honey cigarillos and ended with a bloody mary. I began my epic five day road trip to Chicago a bit sissified, not yet hardened by the 7-11 drip coffee and endless hot pockets that are sure to mark the rest of my trek to the Second City. So scarcely an hour outside of Seattle, I was ready to stop for a latte. A triple short latte with non-fat milk. (You can take the girl out of Seattle, but...)

So I wander in to Swiftwater Cafe in Cle Elum, Washington. Greeting me inside the pastel-colored shop (staffed by two elderly local women) was "Bernie," the five-foot tall taxidermied bear. Bernie the taxidermied bear was holding a small white board with the following Eleanor Roosevelt quote:

"Friendship with one's self is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else."

Upon being presented with this sage wisdom by a dead bear, I probably should have quickly and silently walked back out of the store and bought my latte at one of the drive-up coffee huts that promised to be less morally intrusive. Intrigued, however, by the chance to glean a few other nuggets of moral wisdom, I stayed.

Like a raccoon, I was also irresistibly drawn to the brightly colored coffee cup fabric that one of the elderly baristas had hand sewn into tablecloths, couch covers, and wall hangings. Each of the tables had dried flowers stuck into vases of coffee beans. The pastel walls, the taxidermied bear, the cheerful fabric coffee cups dancing across the tables and walls, the inspirational signs everywhere...it felt more like I was walking into a Better Homes and Gardens cult than a coffee shop.

As I was waiting for my triple short latte, I excused myself to use the restroom. Walking into the women's bathroom, I was blindsided by yet another inspirational saying--this one hanging beneath a stuffed moose head.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

Aptly stated by a dead moose. I'm sure he (or she) would have appreciated a few extra breaths, and fewer moments that take your breath away. Like the moment when you get shot to have your head hung on a pastel wall outside the ladies' room.

Drinking my latte, I had to sit down and puzzle over these quotations. As the cheerful coffee cups danced across my handmade tablecloth, I found myself vaguely unsettled by Eleanor Roosevelt's exhortations about self-friendship. Especially after a weekend of very difficult goodbyes and leaving behind many friends to start a new community in Cairo, I was suddenly troubled. Was I a friend to myself?

Now, I'm not above taking advice from a taxidermied bear. But what could this all mean? I was suddenly horrified by the prospect of landing in Egypt, only to discover that--quite unbeknowst to my conscious self--I had neglected to be my own friend. One can only assume that those around me in Cairo would sniff out my inner unfriendliness and appropriately distance themselves, leaving me quite alone. This was quite problematic.

Luckily, I felt reassured by the thought that the next week would likely be the most luxurious my oft-neglected introvert had ever experienced: four days on the road, by myself, to drive, eat, drink, sleep, smoke, read, rest, sing along to ska bands on my ipod, and do Bollywood Burn and Warrior Goddess Bellydance whenever the spirit moved me. If that's not being a friend to myself, then I don't know what is.

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Now, I had always assumed that Spokane was Seattle's tacky younger sister: less cultured, uglier, had probably been cut from the high school cheerleading squad and all of that. Not that I've ever been to Spokane before, but I had gathered this impression from the sophisticated Seattle-ites, who generally regard all things in eastern Washington as more backward and uglier than its western counterparts.

It turns out that Spokane is really lovely--Seattle appears once again to have fallen victim to its mentality that nothing east of the Cascades is worth knowing...or, perhaps, that nothing even exists east of the Cascades except as a government conspiracy to turn Washington into a red state during an election.

After arriving at the Rodeway Inn and Suites, I decided to go downtown for dinner. One tuna melt, a beer, and 50 pages of "Catcher in the Rye" later, I walked to the Riverfront Park a few blocks away.

I've never seen anything quite like the river there. What city decides to build its downtown next to a stretch of rapids? I began feeling a little unnerved sitting on a park bench near the surging water, wondering how many children nad small animals accidently and unhappily find themselves in it. I hoped there were no malicious shovers who would pop out from behind the bench to push me in. These are the things I think about when I travel alone. Malicious shovers.

In any case. The park was full of weeping willows and enormously fat, white geese, both of which made me very happy. And now, after an hour in my hotel room of Bollywood and Belly Dancing, I can satisfactorily bring Day One of the road trip to a close.

Next stop: Billings, Montana.

Days until Egypt: 13.