Lovely. Bathing.
Not much fun sharing that bathing space.
I abandoned the state park yesterday and showered in town today. A different experience. It is.
Millersylvania State Park south of Olympia, WA is nice. The facilities suck. They look like they were built with CCC crews in the 1930s. I'm sure that they were at least inspired by that period.
Last year, early on, the main restroom was closed, leaving only one "bathhouse" open as a shower location, and it too often was still locked in the morning when it should have been open. Later on it was working but someone vandalized it. Even later there was more vandalism at other points in the park. Someone seemed to have as life's mission the destruction of shower facilities in the park. Whoever it was hit the coin machine parts: where you drop in your tokens and it turns on the hot water. Looked like the person had a pry bar, the way they were ripped off the wall.
This year the main (i.e. in the RV area) bathhouse has one of its two showers working, and it was fine. Fine, considering the location. At Sportsman State Park in Yakima, WA, they clean the restrooms three times a day during the summer months, and the showers at least once, maybe twice. At Millersylvania State Park the schedule seems to be by phases of the moon, if anyone feels up to it, possibly only when the howling grows loud enough.
And anyway, the facilities are old and shaky. Shoddy. Sad and rundown. Even the one working-and-available shower began balking a few days back.
I found this out when the water stopped about three minutes into a six-minute shower, leaving me covered in suds with only a slow trickle of cold water emanating from the shower head. Not a good sign. Not usually. Not this time either.
I tried banging on the meter, which procedure did not work, and tried rinsing in the drippy-drops of water coming out of the plumbing, which did not work, and tried more banging on the meter, which produced hot water.
After this, I decided to put in one token at a time, which also did not work, though adding a third token after the second one failed, seemed to be the solution, for the time being, which wasn't really quite good enough, and banging had no effect either, and so.
I had my last bath there yesterday.
Today I was back at the Olympia Center downtown. Three naked guys were there. Fun. One seemed agreeable when I asked what the fare was these days. I think I used to stuff in four quarters, so that's what I did. He said it was two minutes for each. Four quarters seemed a safe bet.
Then another guy with a hooting voice came over and started flinging verbality at me. His is the kind of voice I cannot hear (being mostly deaf these days), but it sounded like he wanted me to give him a towel, and then soap, and then money, so I gave him two quarters. Generally speaking, I'd rather give a wet naked guy a couple of quarters than my soap and towel.
I think it was rinse-and-dry-only day for him. After he finished with the water part, he went under the forced-air dryer and rubbed himself a lot and got mostly dry.
One guy left and it was just him and the other guy I'd talked to and me then.
I finished and toweled-off and dressed while Noisy Man made some phone calls begging people to send him money with the third guy's phone. I didn't want to be there but I was. Too bad for me.
About the time I was ready to go we were down to Noisy Man and me in the locker room, and he hit on me again, starting with a couple of things I could not catch, followed up by him asking in his extremely loud voice what my favorite color was. Truly.
After that was something I don't remember, but I gave him "I don't have one" as a color answer, and he hooted a few more things before I scuttled out.
You never know.
We seemed too close to the edge of an aggressive moment for my taste.
I'll be back again tomorrow, but maybe a half hour later. It could be that if he's a regular he'll be gone by then and I can still slip in and be done by the 9:00 a.m. deadline while entirely missing him. I hope.
Yeah. Real fun, but I did tell myself before leaving Ecuador that I should seek out colorful characters during this trip. So at least I'd have something to write about.
Yeah. Real fun, and today I got one. Didn't really like it though. Here's hoping for quieter times, starting Real Soon Now.
Clean but annoyed, me. How's by you then?
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