Pitstops
Going on the road
Here’s a bonus post about my recent road trip. You can catch up with the four previous parts of the trilogy here under the travel tag.
I need to spend a penny
In my childhood in England, bathroom stalls had a coin operated lock. They cost a penny, so the phrase “I need to spend a penny” was a euphemism for “I need to powder my nose.” I see what I did there. The coin slots were phased out with decimalization. Also gone are the signs asking, “Gentlemen please adjust your dress before leaving the toilet,” a throwback to the days of button flies.
Restrooms, bathrooms, toilet, WCs, can tell us a lot about the places and times we travel to and through. We’ve seen restroom stalls in Spain with a liquid crystal panel for a door which is transparent when empty, opaque when locked. Disconcerting, but not as much as a street toilette we saw in France, an exhibitionist’s dream come true made of one-way glass for a 360° view of the passersby as you sit on the throne and hope that they really can’t see in.
Here’s one dropped in Washington Square Park as an experiment.
At the other extreme, France also still has the “bomb sight” toilets, where you stand over a hole in the ground. Meanwhile Helsinki, Finland, offers a women’s urinal. Of course we had to look. It’s a stainless-steel funnel. Don’t drop your phone.
Back in the US of A, toilets also reflect the culture. In New York City, a full bladder designates you as a terrorist. On the Jersey Shore, a running club has presented several plaques to a coffee shop in Belmar, almost certainly not for the coffee, but for having the only restroom open in winter in six miles of boardwalk.
He could actually have made the floor cleaner
Life on the open road is a little easier, as I found on my recent trip.
The nagware in my car beeps and flashes a sign at me when I’ve been driving for two hours to advise me that I need to take a fifteen-minute break. The timing’s good, because, being a gentleman of a certain age, every two hours is about how often I need to pee. Interstate rest stops are mostly pretty good, although the multilingual human trafficking hotline posters and, in places, the suicide hotline numbers for farmers above the urinals are sobering signs of the times.
Once a day or so, I also need gas, or a cup of coffee, or a snack, or all three. I’ve come to prefer the Love’s travel stop chain over the others. Cheap gas, passable coffee for three bucks, and, as long as you don’t mind the country music, clean bathrooms. Well, except for the one near Provo, Utah, where the guy who shuffles into the restroom ahead of me, already loosening his pants, spits on the floor right outside. If he’d only waited till he was inside, he could actually have made the floor cleaner. That’s very much an exception, though.
But at least you don’t get eaten by a bear
Bathrooms in the State Park campgrounds are great, and in National Park campgrounds too, except that the condition of the toilets is significantly worse, with rusting panels, cracked windows, and some facilities out of order. In either, at night it’s a walk, and it’s dark, and you’re sleeping in the back of the car, and if you open the door the light goes on, as does the car alarm if you forget, again, to hit the unlock button first, so you use a pee bottle, which is a challenge when you have to get out of the sleeping bag and maneuver yourself into a seat, but at least you don’t get eaten by a bear. In the morning, you find you’re just one of many emptying a pee bottle into a toilet.
I thought I locked the door
In the middle of the trip, my wife and I rendezvous in Durango, Colorado, where we spend a few days visiting my stepdaughter and her partner. One night, the four of us camp together at the Little Molas Lake Colorado Trail trailhead, around 11,000 feet. The primitive campground is free and first-come, first-served. The spot we pick is conveniently located near a pit toilet, actually a pair of pit toilets, a women’s and a men’s, joined in one standard issue park service building.
After a setting up camp, we head out for a five mile hike and return to see another car parked at our site. My stepdaughter and her partner have had a campsite poached before and are immediately on high alert. I say “hi” to the guy in the driver’s seat through his open window. He ignores me. A woman is standing the other side of the campsite wiping her hands. She ignores us too. She walks past us back to the car and they drive off.
“They’re using our water!” says the partner, “She washed her hands with our drinking water after using the toilet. Gross!”
My stepdaughter fires a volley of colorful epithets after the departing car.
A subsequent forensic examination, however, shows no wet spot on the ground under the water container, or any other evidence of foul play, and so we are forced to acknowledge our own rush to judgement and the presumed innocence of the interlopers.
I’m a little concerned now what karma might have in store for me.
Before turning in, I head over to the pit toilet. As I open the door, I’m greeted by a man, seated, plaid shirt, pants round his ankles, fiftyish, red face framed by curly hair and a beard, and looking like he was working hard.
“Oops, I’m sorry.”
“Just a minute” he says, in a strained voice.
A few minutes later, he emerges, looking relieved.
“I thought I locked the door.” He checks the door. It locks fine.
The next morning, I head over to the toilet again. Opening the door, I find a guy standing right behind it, in work pants, boots, cowboy hat, and bandana, buttoning up the front of his barn coat. He’s from the site next to ours, the one with the horses and the trailer.
“I thought I locked the door.” He checks the door. It locks fine.
A couple of hours later, we’ve broken camp and are all packed and ready to leave. I make one more pit stop at the pit toilet. On my way back to the car, I run into mister red face, this time with a female companion, both with boots and backpacking packs.
“Do you know if there’s a garbage anywhere in this campground?”
“I don’t think so. It’s pack in, pack out.”
“If you’re leaving, could you take this for us? Next stop for us is Durango, a few days yet.” He shows me a small wad of cardboard and plastic.
“Sure, I’ll throw it in my garbage bag.”
“Thanks.”
As I walk back to the car he calls out, “for your trouble, would you like this?” He shows me a cell phone backup battery pack that just happens to work with my phone. “It’s dead, and it’s too heavy to carry. Just charge it up!”
“Well, thank you!”
It’s not the karmic outcome I’m expecting, but I’ll take it!
Housekeeping!
I’ve taken a 12v fridge-freezer on this trip to keep food refrigerated in the heat. When parked, I can run it for small bursts from a solar rechargeable battery, but after four days in the trees with meagre sun at Glacier National Park, it’s getting too warm, so I decide to go for a drive to cool it down and also charge up the battery pack. I drive over to the east side of the park into the Blackfeet reservation, where I stop at a tribal gas station for gas, and of course to pee.
The bathroom door’s locked, so I head over to the Native American lady behind the counter.
“Does the restroom need a key?”
“No, is it locked?” She walks briskly over and raps on the restroom door. “Housekeeping!” This must be a thing.
“Just a minute,” says a voice from within.
“Thank you.”
She grins and says, “you’re welcome!”
Not a minute later, a confused looking cowboy comes out, still buckling his belt, and I get to pee.
A dog on my lap and a beer in my hand
The next stop after Glacier is at a friend’s place near Spokane. The GPS takes me across the hot and dry sagebrush steppe of the West Plains until the road suddenly drops into a cool canyon, complete with creek and cottonwoods.
My friend and his wife have twenty acres down there, with a choice of accomodation for guests. While I’m supposed to be in a writing workshop, I’m off the grid, in a golf cart with a dog on my lap and a beer in my hand, on a guided tour of two houses, an outdoor house, a grandkids camp, a sauna, a labyrinth, two trailers, two yurts, and a teepee. In the workshop leader’s words, I’m in the right place.
I get to sleep in the yurt, and the answer to the question is a commode, but an elegant one, a wooden box with a toilet seat under which is a composting toilet, a serious upgrade from a pee bottle.
One eye on the mirror
I’ve been avoiding interstates where possible, so from Spokane I choose US2, which takes me through a number of Eastern Washington wheat farming towns. The first thing you see is the grain elevator, often from miles outside of town. The condition of the grain elevator is a good indication of what you’re going to find. As I approach a rusty elevator with an almost empty gas tank and an almost full bladder, I’m disappointed but not surprised to find the town’s only gas station closed.
At the next, with the fuel gauge and my eyeballs now both flashing yellow, I’m relieved to see the gas station open. The town gas station is next door to the sheriff’s office, and a deputy is filling up his patrol car. I figure I’d better prove my bona fides before finding the bathroom, so, with legs crossed, I fill the gas tank first.
We’re in a moment in history where uniforms and guns are making us uncomfortable. I become aware of the backpack strap end hanging out of the bottom of the passenger door, and of my sleeping bag and pillow visible through the window. He nods, and I nod back, trying really hard not to look like someone who’s been sleeping in the back of his car and hasn’t shaved in a week, although at that moment that’s exactly who I am.
I finish pumping gas and head inside, where the deputy is now holding court for an audience of a lady behind the counter and four good ol’ boys. He stops talking as I walk in, and a dozen eyes look me up and down.
“If you’re looking for the bathroom, it’s outside to the left and round the corner,” says the lady “you’ll need this key.”
After returning the key, I carefully drive the speed limit with one eye on the mirror till I reach the edge of town.
Thanks, as always, for reading or listening. I’ll be back soon with another story from the road. To make sure you don’t miss it, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I listened to this one, John (appreciate your steady reading voice), but scrolled through to have a look at the photos. So many styles! Was the commode for the yurt equally top of the line? My word!
You did a nice job with this one. I always appreciate someone who can take an awkward subject and make it palatable. Very David Sedaris of you!
Well done, and of course quite on theme here at "mostly water." The yurt looks amazing!