In about 40 minutes, a pickup truck that I thought passed me about 15 minutes ago, was going oncoming way, and an old man yelled from the window that I can get killed here and he wants to save my life, he said that he will pull to the turn out 100 feet away and wanted me to go there. So I turned around and came to the man. He had a little trouble hearing, but no trouble speaking, so he told me that he is heading to Canada, to visit his girlfriend (man is 75 years old) and that he can take me anywhere I want, since he didn't have any certain route preference. Well, I never really expected to take rides, but since the bike was a little out of order, I decided to go with him. While loading a bike in the pick up bed, I noticed some heavy rocks in cardboard boxes, I wondered what were they for, assumed that either he didn't get to removing them from last time, or he carries them as additional weight for some reason. I got all the valuables bag, camera and maps and got into the truck. We turned around and headed north. When the truck accelerated to 70 mph I had a VERY strange feeling, the road was going unbelievably fast, so unusual after 3 week crawling. I had a bad feeling of cheating and how nice it would be to ride there. The road was mostly flat, I knew it would be easy to pedal. The landscape outside the window was still the same, yellow dusty dunes, occasional dry plants, and gray mountains on the horizon. James, which is the name of this man, started an interesting monologue about politics, war, modern life and how it was different when he was young. He was upset that people now days live too fast, don't' notice or care about nature and are being brainwashed to be part of the big wheel. He sounded very intelligent and I actually was curious to hear his views. I never found out what was his profession, but rocks in the bed were URANIUM ORE, which he discovered on his property, in large quantities, now he was dealing with companies that could be interested in mining the ore. He was talking something about Chevron, making business with him and something about getting official approval documents. He also named a number of 40 million pounds of (uranium ore or uranium itself that were under the ground there). He definitely knew the basics about the isotope and was talking about using the it for producing electricity.
As some elderly people experience loneliness, I think James also enjoyed being in company with me, we stopped at a gas station and he bought me a hamburger and drink. He thought that there wouldn't be any bike shops around Caldwell, where I decided I wanted to go, and really thought I should have ridden with him all the way to Spokane, Washington. Of course, I couldn't cheat so much, especially because the landscape was becoming so beautiful, with green trees and grass appearing more and more. Then we came into the valley, about 8 miles downhill, on which I would like to roll down so much. Around Caldwell, were several little towns, Homedale, Marsing, where there were fruit ranches with grapes, apples, peaches... numerous fields of corn and other crops. I already decided to pedal back this way, to use a chance to eat some free fruits from the gardens .