# Smelly Train (repost from old site)



## finn (Aug 17, 2008)

This is a story about an early trainhop of mine. All I’d really set out to do was learn stenciling. I’d gotten some stolen spray paint from a friend and made a cutout with my little design on it. I knew this area by some train tracks which had clear space and was out of the way. I had to cross over a large stream, so I chose the hard way, since I didn’t have sandals on and wasn’t about to hazard going across barefoot. I climbed along the pipes of a bridge that went about ten feet above the stream. It wasn’t easy with a thick coating of powdered rust that made the pipes slippery, so I got to the other side exhausted. After resting, it took a few tries to get the hang of stenciling. As I set the stencil down to dry and put the spray paint back in my bag, it started getting very noisy and the air grew rank. A smelly train was passing by very slowly. It stopped! Past the trash container cars, there were grainer cars on it with nice porches and cubbyholes!

A thing to know about the state of Virginia: it makes money by accepting other states’ trash, meaning that the train that stopped before me was most likely going to stop in Richmond, with all of its containers of putrid, rotting rubbish. I wasn’t really prepared for trainhopping, but I wasn’t as badly prepared as my first time, so I hopped in. I chose a nice cleanface cubbyhole of a grainer car. I was riding a very smelly train with most of the stench coming from the cars ahead of me, so I wouldn’t want that blowing right into my accommodations. Next to the cubbyhole was a sign which read "CAUTION CONFINED SPACE ENTER BY PERMIT ONLY."

The train was moving before I got too worried about cops searching it for me. After picking up some speed I saw some railfans doing their thing, blissfully oblivious of me. After some meandering around at 30 mph, I realized that I was going through a tunnel. It became bit dark, and the stink suddenly got a lot worse. As in, gagging-like-my-body-rejects-my-lungs kind of bad. There was a small hole in the floor of my cubby that was letting the foul air in. I tried stuffing it with my feet and backpack while I gasped through my bandanna. This felt more like a bad dumpster experience, but I finally made it through and the train took a hour to get out of DC, going at maybe 20 mph average and stinking up the entire town. I tried to take a photo of the Washington monument, but it was too dark and only red squiggles showed up in the pics. Going through the DC area isn’t much fun: not much scenery and hiding is very important since there are lights and people everywhere. To pass the time, I tried singing songs to myself, but wasn’t terribly successful.

It was freakishly cold that summer night. I assumed it was from being away from the city and from the train’s speed, but it really was colder than it should’ve been. I found myself on the porch of the grainer, just to get a good GPS reading to make sure I was headed south and not west. The GPS was something I'd lifted a while back and came in handy more often than I'd like to admit, but I couldn't think about that. The slack action was pretty bad, jerking me about, and it would’ve tossed me off the train if I wasn’t continuously holding on the railings. After I had gotten the direction I was headed, I looked up at the stars and memorized Orion’s position in relation to my direction, so I wouldn’t have to go out on the porch and expose myself to use the GPS again. I sat in the "V" at the entrance of the cubby as long as I could, since I could have my legs straight, but had to retreat into my cramped quarters. I was going about 40 mph average on a chilly and stinky train, unable to sleep for those two reasons and I’d left my stencil cutout behind.

The train stopped at a college and then moved on to Richmond. I’d been sighted by at least one driver at a crossroad, and was being paranoid again. I had two bandannas on, one over my hair and another over my face, black bloc style, for warmth. I was determined to avoid entering the yard in case the bulls had been alerted and would be looking for me. So, when the train slowed down to what I thought was, oh, 15 mph, right by the Amtrak station, I threw off my pack and then threw myself off. There was only one problem: train was going too fast.

15 mph my ass.

My feet disappeared below me in the blur of ground and I fell into a roll, immediately tumbling across the rocks between two pairs of rails. I felt something else, too, my trajectory turning into a collision path with the still moving train. Not good, and from the look of it, my feet would be first to meet the churning wheels- that is the problem with rolling on your side versus doing a proper tuck and roll- you don't travel straight but in a long curve. I slammed my left palm down to rapidly turn away from the train and stopped abruptly afterwards with a bone bruise on my hand, just to see the train stop to a complete halt. Stupid me. Next time I'd wait a little before hopping off.

I didn’t realize how far away the Amtrak station is from the rest of Richmond. I followed my GPS device towards Carytown, which took me into an industrial park after a half hour. I had found some sprinklers, which I used to clean myself up as much as I could stand, since it was still cold out and then found some large evergreen trees in the front lawn of some company headquarters, where I decided to sleep until daylight, which would have come all too soon if I weren’t so cold. It was early morning, so I visited my friends’ houses as they slept and played with a friend's affectionate cat who remembered me from a while ago who kept my lap warm for a half hour. I loved that cat; his name was Charlie, but he died a while ago. I walked around a bit more and eventually warmed myself up in a house before going over to Food Not Bombs to help cook and serve.

By the time I came back to my impromptu catch-out spot, the stencil cutout I used was gone.


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