# Travel Journal No 4- from pirate town to misery ville



## wokofshame (May 8, 2009)

Alright so about 9 in the morning i WAKE UP where we are sleeping in pirate town on the willamette river, whistler awakens not long after and i asked him if i could roll with him up to seattle. We walk to DT pdx and hang out for the day, he busks, catch a bus to Lake Yd and hop on a train that night we thought was leaving, we move a lil in the middle of the night whilst i'm sleeping in the grainer across from whistler and the next morning we are waiting to leave still. we retreat under the bridge and he finds a worker radio with a dead battery off rr property by a ways (taken by homebum?) which i kept ,thinking of pawning it.
We hop a UP to Seattle, boxcar w/ doors open on both sides, roll slowly to the columbia across the willamette lift bridge and thru north portland jctn, we are looking out on the bridge at the sights and have just stuck our heads out after coming out of hiding in the front corners of the car, haven't looked ahead yet and BAM! there is two MOWs in day-glo orange next to their phatty hirail truck (damn if i could hi-rail my truck someday). 
One raises a hand and points to us as i make an airborne dive back into the recesses of the box. We roll into N Van YD and park so were sitting on the now-closed 39th st grade crossing, we both know we're fucked but hold out hope enough to stay on, especially seeing as there's mad excavators around reshaping the yard preparing to install new trax. 
next thing we know, whistle whistle whistle its a plainclothes bull, brown-skinned guy with wide scars on his right cheekbone. 
"guys i'm gonna give you my retirement present seeing as i'm gone in 5 days. no warrants and you're free to go"
down to the library and ifly a sign for a few hours.
that evening we melt back into the yard, two slinking shadows in the night. see a FRED and go to sleep in some grainers near it. middle of the night, guess what, we're broken up. turns out this train was terminating there. i look around and right by my head where i'd been sleeping is a dead bird. 
we hop off the train and wait by anoither bridge off rr property. i get some 40's . we talk about how peeps were dissing the gathering and the misunderstandings behind it, i joke about how if a bull shits is it called bullshit?, whistler sews patches, and the second 40 is almost polished offwhen along comes a train goin slow. onto grainers and in the holes, turns out this train this train is terminating in the B yard also . not only that but the bull is watching her roll into the yard. here he comes. he's whistling again. 
"come on out" politely.
now i am always hating on homies that aren't being crazy stealth ninja style so dont get me wrong. things could have gone beter but this was some damn bad luck. i give him the radio in an attempt to appease him after he calls the county jail and it turns out they are only accepting felonies today as there is overcrowding. he gives me aride to the library as he's going to the bank and i pull out the radio from my pack and give it to him to his surprise. "what happened to your buddy i popped yesterday?" he took the CAP bus up, i lie. as it turns out, he was watching everything happen from a grainer hole two cars back.
I read the most awesome book in the library ever for the rest of the day, "ballad of the whiskey robber" by julian rubinstein, a true story about a transylvanian refugee named attila ambrus who rides a freight train into hungary hanging from the bottom of the bogies, starts smuggling fur pelts, is the worst hockey goalies ever, then pulls off over 30 bank robberies in Hungary in the late 90's and then escapes from prison on a rope of bedsheets and shoelaces out a 4th story window. before every jo he orders a double shot of whiskey and becomes known as "vizkis '(the whiskey robber) sometimes he's so wasted he is slurring his words and the tellers laugh at him until he waves his piece ("the gun is just for show"
That night I walk to Champ Siding in Portland and grab a DS and ride it to Green River Why-oming. Hoping the best for whistler who it tuns out hitches to Seattle (thanks man we had agood time). I'm walking to the Mcdicks and meet the ugliest dumbass pig ever who accuses me of burglaries over the last 3 days. Stupidity in Wyoming never ceases to amaze, from the jackasses on quads and dirtbikes ripping shit up caus they think theres no end to it, to this bitch ass pig who must fucking realize that its LOCAL TWEEKERS that are behind these crimes.
Anyway I am not in a mood to take any shit and we get in an argument with another pig watching , she ends up getting so mad she hops up and down and tells me to "go back home! get out of wyoming".and "Oooooh, I wish I could put you in jail". just wait, just wait til dark you ass clown. I don't appreciate being called a transient and I honestly would rather go to jail than put up with that bullshite. 
That night there's a poetry and music coffehouse deal at the library with like 60 people and I conjured up "sheep and goats" from memory so i could get up on stage and talk shit about this pig "corporal" debbie tibby. one girl in the audience was like "she's my aunt" and i was like "sorry" completely insincerely and she was like "no, it's allright" . I guess if you're that much of a dick even yer own niece doesn't like you.
Off to North Platte as it turns out and really the town is nothing special, I had a bad hacking cough that was getting worse so I wnet to the Mission to take a zero day and I was so sick it took 2 hours to walk 3 miles in the rain.
The next night I headed back to the yard and picked some morel mushrooms and drank some 2-pounders and when the coast was clear, which took hours and hours of wiating, headed into the WBD run-thru yd and hopped on a slave unit. Intermodal tarins are for the most part pulling up into the dead middle/south side of the yard and it's only coal and grain that are sitting in that run-thru yd. But who wants to walk to the very center of North Platte? Anway a carmans truck comes up so I hide in the bathroom and lock the door. Turns out this slave unit ain't going to the coal fields anytime soon. Worse, it's heading to the carman's shop for repairs. We back and forth and fianlly stop and I work up the nerve to poke my head up. We are in front of the carman's HQ which bears big banners reading AREA 51 (ni kidding). Peoples all around and lots of lights and vehicles. It's one of those fight or flight moments and I neither fight nor flee. I duck back into the bathroom and listen to the "bump bump bump" throbbing of my heart. I slow my pulse and run for the door, vault down the ladder, across 5 trax, into a ditch and roll under a pipeline marked "flammable- diesel fuel". A cheyenne-bound DS is coming by right at the moment , about 10 mph and i grab a ladder and vault into a 53-mini well and hide undrneath the cheese grater as we speed up past a bull watching the train and leave the shithole of Bailey Yard.
Dawn brings Cheyenne and i grab some coffee and a b-fast burrito and head for the bnsf yard, where I make a fire and parctice following deer tracks, wait all day eating drinking hot cocoa and chilaxxing. A train comes just before dusk and I hop in an old empty Great northern woodchip car and make a tiny fire out of pieces of bark remnant from its load. Dawn brings Casper, and not long after a pretty canyon on the (powder??) river for a few miles. I fall asleep again and wake up in Laurel Montana. Talk to some friendly workers and hear that traffic is way down. The next morning I promptly miss the KCKPAS (argentine yd kansas-pasco) and LAUPAS . a nice women kicks me dwon coffee and conversation at the trukstop across I-90 and I watch NCAA in the trucker's lounge. she tells me about a hobo named gypsy that made her a fine bow years ago and how she'd like to know where it is. 
rent-a-cop kicks me out from under the bridge and i headed back for the old jungle which was deserted as hell, picked some watrecress, \practiced walking on skinny lil pipelines across the brook , startled a turtle sunning theirself . Eventually comes one of those earthworm graintrains with no rides followed on its heels by coal which I hop on a car so I don'ty have to worry about the unitsetting their compliance check there, get rained on and switch in Livingston to a unit, well this train was slower than jerry's kids and it took us maybe 5 hours to leave laurel and then the next day maybe 11 hours to leave helena? we sided maybe 70 miles out of missoula right next to the 90 and i hopped off, jumped the fence, stuck my thumb out, 2nd car is a bert white type that pulls over "don't wanna leave ya here in the dark" and brings me to missoula. 3 months and i'm home. Find the homies and in a few minutes we're coloring flyer cards for a Moby Dick reading and drinking Moose Drools. There's nothing better than having friends and i want to thank all the people at the stp gathering and anybody else who helped me along the way. That's probably my last train for a hella minute and i know i'll be jonesing again but i got my old job back with my old crew and life is looking good.


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## wokofshame (May 12, 2009)

Widerstand said:


> About the "now-closed 39th st grade crossing" this is news to me! just what are they doing? building an overpass?



exactly. there are excavators at work and i guess when they are done next year there will no longer be an A or B yard, i think there prepping for the trax to be relaid in a one-bowl configuration type deal.


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## Ravie (May 12, 2009)

great story murt! i hate when cops accuse me of out the the ordinary shit like that too. crazy.


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## NickCofphee (May 14, 2009)

Nice story! I must've just missed you in Green River and Cheyenne. I rolled through there about 5 days ago, waited in Cheyenne for a night.


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## veggieguy12 (May 14, 2009)

My feeling is that cops say something to get you to deny it and provide an alibi, which they will then try to grill you about.
Best to say nothing to any police, except perhaps to remind them that they ought to remember you're "presumed innocent until _proven_ guilty".
If they had any proof they'd already have you in cuffs. And it's not your responsibility to prove yourself innocent, is it?


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## pola negri (May 17, 2009)

Damn! Good story.


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## flashinglights (Jul 30, 2009)

Good stories! I know a lot of those locations from growing up in the 'Couve. I have a pretty good idea where you bought those 40s at.

Travellers have been flying signs at that Vancouver library for at *least* 15 years, and probably forever. I used to hit them with change as a kid there. 

More library trivia: The district is building a new one to replace it, right DT off Evergreen where the car dealers used to be. The first library in town there, a Carnegie, is now the Historical Society on Main and 16th. It formerly housed a Railroad Museum in its basement, so you might find interesting things to see there if you're passing through.


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## stove (Jul 31, 2009)

Glad you made it back to Misso kindasorta safely. Enjoy the time off, smoe great travel stories. Hope to see you when I return west, hopefully for the StP gathering in October.


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