24 Hours in the City of Bakers (USA Day 91)

After yesterday’s cowboying adventures, our intention today was to find quiet places to be, mainly. That started with Broadway, the main street, whose pretty antique shops were all closed but made for interesting window shopping at the very least. We found ourselves magnetised towards yesterday’s park, if only to see how it sounded without all those oily cars and men clogging it up.

Under the pergola were congregated a group of happy people in some sort of queue. Now, we British love a queue, so I wandered over to join. It turns out that the local Lutheran church have an annual service outside, right there in the park. Just across the way sat the lectern and a few picnic chairs, and now all that was over, it was time for lunch. The ladies invited us to join them, and with burgers on the grill smelling that good, who were we to say no? Hungrily, I beckoned Amy over and we joined the queue, soon finding ourselves munching on aforementioned burger along with a range of potato salads, in the company of yet another lovely, welcoming group of folks.

We didn’t know who to thank, so plumped with everybody. That seemed to suffice. Afterwards, we plonked ourselves on the grass and did some reading interspersed with a cheeky nap or two, then chatted to a police officer on patrol who told us that there was one gun crime in the UK every three hours (?) and some other facts. Before long, a local jazz band started up in the nearby bandstand. You can say what you want about Baker City, but the local entertainment scene is fabulous. We’ve been to five separate community events in the last twenty four hours, and we don’t even live here. What a fun place.

The other main news from today is that we’ve moved on from pre-fabricated trail mix and are now cutting our own. This is a dangerous progression that probably spells bad news, and somebody should probably stage an intervention at some point, but not until we’ve mixed up our own personal combinations of nuts, fruit and chocolate at exactly the right ratio, then bagged them up and stuck them under our armpits for easy access while riding.

Tomorrow’s a biggie. Three hills before Prairie City, and no community barbecues in sight. What are we ever to do?