These guys were eating at the same cafe in Puyallup as we were. Nicole is so open hearted she can make instant friends with anyone. Two of these guys had been mayor of Puyallup for several terms and the other one was long standing superintendent of schools. The mayors said anyone who stays in Puyallup long enough ends up being mayor.

After Nicole took this photo, we split ways. She went to the bus station to catch the bus to Tacoma where she caught the train to Seattle.
I continue on the STP ( Seattle to Portland bike route) to go up the only hill on the route. The hill is quite easy but there are no trail markers at the top of the hill so I got lost for about two hours riding around but eventually I made my way back to the STP bike path in the town of Stanaway.

There are drive in expresso shacks everywhere. The risqué ones were just by the industrial parks. They are called “Barbie’s”.

Maybe why there is so much caffeine everywhere is because it is a depressing climate?
.
You see many churches as well but some of the church buildings are now mini marts and then there is this one
Conversely some mini markets become churches.
I hope it all balances out.

I’m back in the groove of eating out of grocery stores. As I sat on the bench next to my bike outside UnSafeway, this grocery store older man (tag on shirt) comes over and says brightly “Hi! How are you?”
I say “Great, and you?” He says, “Great too, thanks” and then he moves away to smoke his cigarette (which is why he is outside).
Then he says hello to another woman in the same way, only he addresses her by name and they clearly know each other in a daily way.
She answers his question with a kind of whiney, “oh I’m OK I guess”
He then in a friendly encouraging way, says “oh come on, you can do better than that” Her response to this is to start ragging on him about his smoking.
Then he says with a smile one run on sentence which I’m not quite sure how to punctuate. “yeah I know one of these days I’m gonna die”.

I ended today in Centralia which is a nice town with lots of old old buildings.

I couldn’t find nuts in the grocery store here so the cashier told me to check the bulk aisle which looked like this 🙂