I had dropped everything that didn't matter. I hit bottom. It felt good.

I stepped off the bus and into the downtown Portland greyhound station. It was just as I remembered it from years ago. Disturbingly clean and free of sleeping vagrants... Stepping outside, the fresh air filled my lungs. The air here was so much better than Los Angeles, you could feel it.

I walked down the sidewalk through downtown, a strange sense of deja vu coming to me at certain corners. While I had never really spent any time here, I had passed through enough times to vaugely recognize a few things. I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket with the address for Mell's work on it.

Mell was what I would describe as a metal head, but she had a lot of crust in her as well. So she was probably about 50/50. Short and stocky, with a black mullet haircut, and an Iron Maiden shirt, she didn't look like the type girl you'd want to start a fight with. She must have been a year or two older than myself, although I was never sure. It certainly felt like she was older than me.

Oddly enough I met her on the internet while I was getting some things together at my parent's house. She said I should come check out Portland, she'd give me a place to stay, and show me around. A guided tour sounded pretty good. It was odd though, I was going to a different state to meet a complete stranger, but it seemed more natural than anything else I had done lately.

Mell was such a sweet girl, taking me to all the best record stores and vegan restaurants. I never bought anything, but it was fun looking through all the records, driving around town, seeing a pair of crusty kids walking down every other block. Her roommates were as equally friendly, burning me CD's of music they thought I should check out, discussing classic cult movies, and introducing me to my first samurai flick (if you're wondering what the difference between samurai and kung fu flicks are, samurai flicks are like japanese westerns with intense sword fight scenes instead of kung fu). It was a great week, I was enjoying my newfound freedom and for the first time in ages, I was able to relax and enjoy militant unemployment that I hoped would last the rest of my life.

One of Mell's friends introduced me to Dave Tedder. Dave came from Baltimore with a few other friends and had been hopping trains for the past eight months. He had been separated from his friends in Vancouver, WA when they got split up after running from the bull (railroad police). He'd been in Portland now for a month, and just found out his friends were waiting for him in Minneapolis, so he was ready to leave town.

Dave, Mell, her roomates, and myself went to a bar where Mell bought me a few beers and we talked about where I wanted to go next. I explained how I wanted to hop a train to Michigan and see my friend Tasha. Dave wanted to head back east as well, so we agreed to trainhop together that weekend.

I got my things together the next day, gave Mell a hug and thanked everyone for being so awesome. I met up with Dave at his friend's house and we walked over to Portland's 'Steel Bridge'. The steel bridge is another one of the bridges that cross the river to downtown Portland and where hotshots to the east ride by slow enough to hop on. The sun had fallen just before we got there, and we could hear the rumble of a passing train as we neared the bridge. Reaching the top of the slope we could see the dirty yellow cars of a hotshot slowly passing by. My heart began to race as Dave scanned the passing cars below us for something we could ride on.

I hadn't ridden on a train for almost 2 1/2 years, and I hoped I didn't look too visibly nervous. I'd never ridden a hotshot train either, so I had no idea what to do. Dave had the driver's manual on this one. He finally determined that there was nothing we could ride on this train as the last few cars passed us. We walked down the hill to the tracks under the bridge as I watched the blinking red light on the end of the train fade into the darkness.

We reached the bottom of the hill and retreated into the shadows of the bridge. We dropped our packs and settled down to wait for the next train when Dave noticed someone else wrapped up in a sleeping bag nearby. He walked over, the guy awaking with a start as Dave got within a few feet. Dave asked as politely as possible if he knew anything about the trains around here. He didn't. Dave apologized for waking the guy up and settled back into our spot next to me.

"Ya guys wanna know about the trains?" said a voice above us. Startled, we looked up to see an older guy above us looking down from his perch among the pipes under the bridge! He had laid thick wooden boards over the large steel pipes creating a suspended platform above the ground. It was high enough to keep him dry from the rain washing down the hill - he would later explain - but low enough that we could stand up and climb up the pipes to it. Inviting us up, we settled ourselves onto the platfrom and he introduced himself as Robert.

It was really dark in the shadows of that bridge. All I could make out of Robert was a beard framing the bottom of his faint silloette, and the glowing cherry of his cigarette. I guessed he was around thirty or thirty five.

We commented on how cool his little setup was. "Yeah, I laid these thick pieces of wood on these pipes so I could keep dry when the rain pours down the hill." pulling out a pouch of TOP tobacco he added, "And it has the added advantage of no one ever noticing I'm here. Especially the bulls. Wanna roll a smoke?"

"Are there a lot of bulls around here?" asked Dave, taking the pouch of tobacco.

"Every couple of hours you'll see them drive by and shine their lights up here lookin' for trainhoppers. They never bother the transients though. They never see me up here though either. You're welcome to stay up here where you'll be safe."

Looking up from my freshly rolled cigarette I said, "Thanks. How long have you been in Portland?"

"I've been here about a month and a half. I think I'm going to stick around here for a few more weeks and see what happens though. It's too easy to live here. All the homeless programs and whatnot."

Dave continued talking trains with him. Another junk train or two passed by that night, nothing we wanted to ride, and soon I dozed off to the sound of their talking. I woke once or twice to a high powered floodlight snooping around under the bridge. Looking over the edge of the boards I could see a white ford bronco with a search light. Not seeing us in our perch in the pipes, the bull drove on.

I woke that morning to the realization that Dave and I were alone on that platform. Dave was putting his sleeping bag in his pack while I entertained thoughts of us talking to a 'ghost hobo' last night in the back of my head.

The both of us were hungry as hell that morning and we headed over to a food kitchen called Sisters of the Road. It was a great volunteer run diner that most of the transients in Portland frequented due to their extremely cheap meals and the fact that you could work for credit towards food. We stepped into the line that was snaking out the door of the restaurant, prepared to work our asses off for an hour to get a plate of food.

"Hey, I think I still have credit here." said Dave. After waiting in line for about a half an hour we finally reached the register. Looking at their books, Dave still had five dollars of credit from work he did there a while back. We each got a plate of rice and beans for a $1.25 each and some coffee. What a deal!

Leaving the diner with our bellies full, Dave suggested that we go to the Food Not Bombs (FnB) feeding at a park nearby to stock up on food for the trip. It sounded like a good idea considering we had a four day trip ahead of us. We walked to the park where there was already a crowd of people lounging around the park, satisfied looks on their faces.

Turns out we were a little late getting there so there wasn't any hot food left. There was plenty of dumpstered bread and odwalla carrot juice though. I was feeling a little shy, sitting next to my pack munching on a loaf of bread while Dave did the rounds talking to people he knew.

Dave came back a few minutes later with two girls in tow. "Hey Matt, meet Jade and Caitlin."

"Hi." I said sheepishly.

"Hey, you guys know how to hop trains right? We wanna hop to Kentucky for the PAZ conference, but we want to ride with some people that have experience."

"Yeah we've both hopped trains before." Dave said. "And we're heading to the PAZ conference too. We'll at least I am. Matt's getting off in Chicago to see a friend."

"That's cool. Can we ride with you guys?"

"Sure." we both said.

We stopped by the grocery store to get some rolling tobacco and some canned food before heading out. Looking at my crew change guide, I suggested we take a bus to a different hop out spot. The four of us got off the bus that night in NE Portland and walked to the tracks, following the directions in the crew change to a place it called 'Champ Siding'. It was the first time I had used it, it was great, it felt like following a treasure map.

We reached the small bridge that the guide said was a good spot to hide, and I could see why. It was surrounded by small trees and bushes on both sides and had a solid wall holding up the bridge on each side of the tracks - enclosing it perfectly. There was a small path between the bushes and the wall on the left side. Walking through the path we heard a dog barking at us up between the rafters of the bridge and a female voice saying "Shush boy, be quiet."

Dave announced our presence into the darkness. "We just came to hop a train." After a few minutes of cautious questions and answers, Dave and the strangers realized they knew each other. Laughing it off, two girls came down to where we were so we could see them, while trying to keep their dog calm.

I couldn't see them too well in the dark, although I could tell one had facial tattoos. They were nice though, and let me have a beer out of their half rack. The beer felt good in my stomach, and I sat back and listened to everyones chatter.

"Yeah we've been waiting here for the past two days. There's been a couple of junk trains, but no hotshots." Another half an hour or so later a junk train pulled in and the two girls decided they were tired of waiting for a hotshot and crawled into a grainer car on the junk train. I thanked them for the beer and wished them luck. A few minutes later the train shoved off and all was quiet.

I was beat from all the walking we did that day, so I lay on my pack and closed my eyes, waiting for the roar of a train to jump me awake. It didn't take long. Three or four times during the night I was shaken awake by the rumble of a train coming down the tracks. Each time we would jump up and peek around the wall between us and the tracks only to realize it was a junk train or it was going the wrong direction. For the last train I just opened my eyes, watched it going by in the wrong direction and went back to sleep. Nintey percent of trainhopping is waiting.

I woke that morning to the crunching sound of Jade and Caitlin eating their huge bag of already-crushed chips. Mmmm breakfast. I sat up looking at my surroundings. I could see everything now, the tan dirt hill sloping up to the bridge rafters. The bushes giving us cover on both sides of the bridge. The wall that I lied next to, shielding us from the few of passing trains. My eyes focused on that wall as I stood up. It was covered in countless tags and drawings from the many travelers that had waited here before us. To the right I could see a fresh painting of a girl applied to the wall with fingers and berries. I figured it was one of Dave's friends from last night.

Walking from out under the bridge I made the connection between the painting and the bushes. "Hey guys, these are rasberry bushes!" Everyone ran over, and we stuffed ourselves silly...

Back at the park, Jade and Caitlin mentioned they were from Canada. "Hey, if you're both from Canada, how come you don't say stuff like 'eh' and 'aboot'?"

Caitlin replied, "Just cause we're from Canada doesn't mean we have accents. You guys on the other hand..."

"How can you tell we have accents?" I said. "We sound just like you."

"All americans have heavy accents. You all sound funny to me."

Hmm. I still didn't understand how they could hear our accents if they sounded just like us, but oh well... I told them my favorite Canadian joke. "Hey, how did Canada come up with its name?" waiting for the go-ahead.

Jade asked, "I dunno, how?"

"They put a bunch of letters in a hat and pulled one out at a time saying, 'C, eh?... N, eh?... D, eh?..." They laughed.

"That's pretty good. I've never heard that one before." I was suprised they hadn't.

We waited all day for the train. We all felt the spike of excitement everytime a train roared in the distance and one of us calling, "Train!!!" - rushing to our packs ...only to have the adrenaline die off when we realized it was going the wrong direction. We added our drawings and words of wisdom to the wall. I wrote a bunch of quotes from Fight Club and the Crimethinc book.

The next morning I walked up the slope to the girders of the bridge, bored out of my mind. Examining the tags on the steel beams I came across a message. 'Leave something here for the next hobo.' It was written in chalk with an arrow pointing down to where a deck of cards lay.

"Hell yes!" I said out loud. Finally, something to kill the time! I showed them the cards and the message. I grabbed my pack and left a small pen light where the cards once stood. We played a few card games - Jade and Caitlin showing us the Canadian variants - until, a hotshot finally chugged by. The last car passed us, and we almost gave up until Caitlin suggested we walk up the tracks to see if it did stop. Out of desparation and nothing better to do, Dave walked up the tracks until he was out of view from where I was standing at the bridge. A few minutes later I could see him hauling ass back towards us.

"Holy shit. It stopped!" I said. Everyone ran to their packs while I slung my pack and Dave's onto each of my shoulders. Catching up to Dave, I handed him his pack and the four of us ran up to the end of the train. Dave began inspecting each car, looking for a 48 with a floor we could ride in. About ten to fifteen cars up, we finally found a car to heave ourselves into. Tired, my breath came fast from running so far with my pack and I collasped to the floor of the car catching my breath. Everyone else did the same. I was sweating bullets from the hot sun, and my heart was pounding. It felt like I was going to have a heartattack. Thoughts of the train waiting for the police to arrive and arrest us flew through my mind making the adrenaline pump harder through my veins. The only thing that could alleviate my fears would be the shudder of the train moving forward telling us we were on our way. So we waited.

Finally it happened. The jolt of the train, the cars slowly beginning to move forward, and the crash of the cars against each others' couplers as the slack between them picked up. The wind picked up as we gained speed, cooling the sweat covering my body. Standing up, I watched as the outskirts of Portland flew by and breathed a sigh of relief. Everything would be alright.