i went to a show in charlotte at the commonwealth house last september. murder media, ied, and some other bands were playing. you might've seen me there. or perhaps in columbia; i go to shows here all the time.
in regards to the trip,
me and two friends hopped a train out of charleston, SC headed towards savannah, GA. we were planning to get off in savannah and go to macon, i believe. however the train rolled through the two savannah yards and we ended up in waycross, GA (HORRIBLE PLACE). we got almost out of the yard (literally 50 feet away from the road) and got stopped by a csx cop and a waycross cop. they ran our ids and let us go with a warning, telling us to go to #1 and hitchhike out of their town ("our town doesn't want you here" is what they said). so we hitched a ride to another south GA town, dublin, which was actually really cool. the people there were REALLY generous and eerily kind; we got food, cigarettes, and alot of money kicked down to us the three days we were stuck there. we camped out behind a mcdonalds. we ended up hitching out at 3 AM with a badass, crazy, chain-smoking trucker who took us all the way to oklahoma city. OKC sucked because the windchill was about 8 degrees and there was a fucking ice storm, so we didn't bother trying to even find the yard there. we just hung out at a truck stop where they let us stay the night in the movie room. the next night we got kicked out by the manager and ended up randomly meeting a trucker who bought us a hotel room and told us that if we got up at 10 the next morning, he'd take us to california. so we hung out with this dude for a few days; he ended up dropping off me and the dude (the other girl left us for the truckers...fucking weird as shit!!) in albuquerque with enough money for two greyhound tickets to LA and 60 bucks extra. so we got to LA and somehow ended up in long beach because my traveling mate had a friend there, but we didnt meet up til the next day. LONG BEACH SUCKED. it's hard to find a place to drink or sleep; even the beach gets patrolled by cops. there are cops, cameras, and private security cops everywhere! the next day we found a bridge and hung out under it drinking; we both ended up getting drunk and deciding calling our parents to let them know we were still alive was a good idea...three phone calls later we somehow had free bus tickets to oakland, CA (i have a family friend there who hadn't seen me in 14 years). we hung out there for about 4 or 5 days. we met a girl who did alot of trainhopping 15 years ago, and she offered us a place to stay although we couldnt get in touch with her when we needed it. we found a really awesome bridge there near laney college where we could drink and watch trains go by. we decided to go up to fremont, which was pretty boring except we found an awesome place to camp (ninja camp! we could see everything but no one could see us!). we ended up in union city when this nice guy named emmanuel gave us money and food and was going to let us stay at his house but his mother was there so we couldnt. instead he took us to a park where we could camp out and didn't get bothered by anyone. (and it was right near a bridge!) it was under that bridge in union city that my traveling mate decided his back was bothering him too much to keep going with our trip; we had only been gone a month! so we headed back to oakland and i called my mom, made up a heinous lie (we decided that traveling wasn't for us and that we were gonna go to college, along with the whole back being fucked up thing) and told her we needed to get back to columbia right away. so three crazy days on the bus later (a lady with a bible in her hand told me she'd "bust my ass up!") we were back. and here i am.
