The mountain was soaked after a night of thunderstorms, which thankfully stopped just short of flooding my tent. I had plenty of food but starting a fire was hopeless and I’d wanted to check out Elkins anyway.

I rolled in through the McDonalds and gas stations that ring the outskirts of every American town, greeting Harleys and pickup trucks to Randolph County, West Virginia’s only bastion of civilization. A billboard for the Inter-Mountain newspaper said it contained “A Number of Things You Need to Know.”

Most people didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to eat breakfast at the Exxon but someone eventually told me about Mee Mee’z Cafe behind the Federal Building. Mee Mee’z is the kind of place that everyone sort of imagines the rest of the country is made of, where Real Americans eat Real Breakfasts before doing Real Work. Eggs and bacon vanish under bushy mustaches dripping with coffee while the morning’s gossip filters in from bored shopkeeps. Mee Mee sits in the middle like a kindly matriarch, icing her cakes and imparting folky wisdom.

It’s going to rain, her hip is acting up. You know, like on TV.

“I remember you,” the waitress said as she poured a fifth unsolicited cup of coffee. “You were in here a few weeks ago.”
“Ah, I don’t think so, I’ve never been here before.”
“Well there was someone who looked a lot like you, they were also on a motorcycle from DC.” I thought for a minute that Andrew and Maddy might have ridden through the Allegheneys, but they’d crossed the divide far south of here.

Who knows, maybe I’ve been two weeks ahead of myself this whole time.