will eee um
Roads Scholar
So, after having a blast at the Jambo with @Matt Derrick @jimi @Jerrell @Koala & Dylan, I hopped out of Eugene to Dunsmuir. It was my first time every being there and I found it to be a nice and quiet little town, though the 1 supermarket in town closes kinda early (7 PM). The hobo camp by the hopout spot has some chairs and a lovely mattress to sleep on, however I didn't spend the night there. After checking out the supermarket, I met another traveler there named Toby while scarfing down some sliced potatoes that I got at the deli and we first tried to camp out for the night under the bridge by the hopout spot near the river; it isn't a spot I would recommend though. It's a very tight fit to get into, especially with a pack, a skateboard, and a gallon of water...not to mention the constant stream of airborne dust anytime there is even a slight gust of wind.
I had some initial apprehensions about Toby while we were under that bridge though. He lost his cellphone on the cliff under the bridge and I tried to help him find it. However, it was nearly pitch black under that bridge and we needed to use headlamps and flashlights to see. He tried to go down the cliff and had a small fall on the way down (he should've gone around instead). As he was on the bottom of the cliff near the tracks, he called out to me to ask if I could see if this shiny object resting on a rock above was his cellphone. So, I decided to make my way down the cliff, being very careful throughout, to where he said the shiny object was. I had my flashlight pointed to where he said his phone was and I didn't see anything there, but he kept on insisting that his phone was right next to my feet even though there was nothing there. After that back and forth, he ran off to the river and disappeared for ~30 minutes. At that point, I thought "ok, my gut is telling me this guy is crazy, I need to get the fuck outta here". So, I made my way back up the cliff, which was scary as hell given the steep drop, and gathered up my things. As I was leaving, he came back around to the top of the cliff underneath the bridge. We had a little back and forth convo and my fears about him started to slowly go down as he explained he was just anxious about having lost his cellphone. We decided to not camp under the bridge and instead make our way to the woods near the Little League Ball Park to camp for the night. This wound up being a good decision and my initial fears about him went away. After we set up camp, we ate some of his chips mixed with some of my tuna, he also had a bunch of weed in a mason jar and we smoked some of it before going to sleep for the night.
The next day we swapped contact info and split ways. He went back into town to attempt to find his phone while I stayed at the camp till later in the afternoon to wait for @Jerrell to get off of work to take me up to Mt. Shasta City & Lake Siskiyou. I spent a week at the campsite where there were glorious bathrooms and showers 😁 with some of those days being spent checking out Mt. Shasta City on my skateboard that @Jerrell found at one of the campsites, probably left & forgotten by some yuppie, and kicked it down to me. So, thank you very much 🙏🙏🙏 @Jerrell for the fuckin' awesome accommodations and the kickdowns, I really appreciate it. I also met an awesome RV traveler named Kendra who was living and working at the campsite with @Jerrell. We sat around a campfire one night to banter and tell stories, though my most memorable moment of that is that she jokingly tried to throw me into the firepit after I took her seat after she got up and left to use the restroom because it was closer to the warm fire. NGL, it was hilarious but also like 5% traumatizing 🤣. BTW, if anyone here ever decides to visit the campsite by Lake Siskiyou, just a FYI, the squirrels there are not afraid of humans. If they know you have food, they turn into some hardcore spangers lol. I left some tortillas in my pack and one of them chewed a hole though it and ate some; I had to patch that up with some gorilla tape 😠.
I left Mt. Shasta on Tuesday night (the 23rd). @Jerrell took me back to Dunsmuir where I caught a train outta there going south. I was hoping to make it to Stockton so I could visit my best friend who lives nearby in Tracy for his birthday. He's a housie who lives in the suburbs with his parents and they were ok with me spending a few days there and I was super happy to be able to see him again and get a shower and a bed. When the train was just outside of Roseville around 7 AM, it stopped at a red signal for ~30 minutes and in retrospect, I should have gotten off there where it was nice and cool in the morning; you are about to see why. I called in a trace on the grainer I was riding on and UP said it was going to City of Industry down in LA. I thought this meant the train would eventually proceed through the Roseville yard and onto Stockton, but boy was I wrong. When the train pulled into the Roseville yard, it stopped and I waited hoping it would continue. I fell asleep for ~2 hours and when I woke up it was already around 90 degrees outside. I got lazy and decided to wait longer and not leave the yard or try to catch another train in that yard because I assumed it would eventually continue on and I didn't want to leave the shade of the end of the grainer. The train eventually pulled forward and then backwards past a trainyard worker who had some over-the-ear headphones on and was singing out loud. I realized based on some signs around the yard that I was now in the hump yard. After the train passed the worker, I saw that it got disconnected and was slowly going down the tracks of the hump yard. The grainer car eventually stopped with a mild bump, but there was a tanker car approaching it ready to hump it. I held on for dear life and my god when that tanker hit my grainer, the bump was so heavy and loud that my ears started ringing for like 15 seconds afterwards. I didn't know what to do at that point, so I just waited till enough cars were attached that the seismic action of the train cars humping each other wasn't so severe. I threw my stuff off the train and proceeded to exit the yard anyway I safely could. At that point I didn't give a fuck if anyone saw me, but some trainyard workers did see me. One of them waved at me and told me to come towards him, so I did. I told him I was just tryna leave and he said that I should be careful b/c I was not visible due to the lack of a reflective vest, I could get killed or lose some limbs, and that those white trucks there were the bulls and that I could be arrested for trespassing if I didn't leave. He then told me how to get out of the yard and pointed out the direction of the nearby Amtrak station. He didn't even ask for my ID or document the incident, which was one silver lining out of the situation. I then headed to the Amtrak station and caught a Thruway Bus to Sacramento where I got a Capitol Corridor ticket to Emeryville and asked my friend to pick me up there after he got off of work in San Jose.
While I was kinda bummed out about what happened, I did have an awesome ride on the Amtrak. I met this chick named Pony who works for CalFire and she bought us both a couple of White Claws. We then proceeded to get schwilly af on the train, we danced a little, swapped stories, and she even shared her Elf Bar vape with me. When we got off the train, I forgot my skateboard that @Jerrell gave me. (They found it 2 days later and I picked it up though.) Anyways, after we got off, we were both pretty drunk and we waited at the station for a few minutes until her bus to LA came. We hugged and parted ways, but I was still super schwilly by the time the station closed; my friend hadn't arrived yet so I crashed on a bench outside the station with my sleeping bag wrapped around my upper body like a poncho in the cold Bay Area weather. I was woken up sometime later by my friend who saw me still passed out on the bench and was like "are you ready to leave?" 😝 I then put my shit in his car and passed out again on the ride to his parent's house in Tracy where I'm at right now writing this post lol.
I'ma be heading down to San Diego on Monday the 29th...gonna homebum there till the end of September. Hopefully by then it will be cool enough to head onto Arizona and the south after that.
Safe Travels,
will-eee-um
I had some initial apprehensions about Toby while we were under that bridge though. He lost his cellphone on the cliff under the bridge and I tried to help him find it. However, it was nearly pitch black under that bridge and we needed to use headlamps and flashlights to see. He tried to go down the cliff and had a small fall on the way down (he should've gone around instead). As he was on the bottom of the cliff near the tracks, he called out to me to ask if I could see if this shiny object resting on a rock above was his cellphone. So, I decided to make my way down the cliff, being very careful throughout, to where he said the shiny object was. I had my flashlight pointed to where he said his phone was and I didn't see anything there, but he kept on insisting that his phone was right next to my feet even though there was nothing there. After that back and forth, he ran off to the river and disappeared for ~30 minutes. At that point, I thought "ok, my gut is telling me this guy is crazy, I need to get the fuck outta here". So, I made my way back up the cliff, which was scary as hell given the steep drop, and gathered up my things. As I was leaving, he came back around to the top of the cliff underneath the bridge. We had a little back and forth convo and my fears about him started to slowly go down as he explained he was just anxious about having lost his cellphone. We decided to not camp under the bridge and instead make our way to the woods near the Little League Ball Park to camp for the night. This wound up being a good decision and my initial fears about him went away. After we set up camp, we ate some of his chips mixed with some of my tuna, he also had a bunch of weed in a mason jar and we smoked some of it before going to sleep for the night.
The next day we swapped contact info and split ways. He went back into town to attempt to find his phone while I stayed at the camp till later in the afternoon to wait for @Jerrell to get off of work to take me up to Mt. Shasta City & Lake Siskiyou. I spent a week at the campsite where there were glorious bathrooms and showers 😁 with some of those days being spent checking out Mt. Shasta City on my skateboard that @Jerrell found at one of the campsites, probably left & forgotten by some yuppie, and kicked it down to me. So, thank you very much 🙏🙏🙏 @Jerrell for the fuckin' awesome accommodations and the kickdowns, I really appreciate it. I also met an awesome RV traveler named Kendra who was living and working at the campsite with @Jerrell. We sat around a campfire one night to banter and tell stories, though my most memorable moment of that is that she jokingly tried to throw me into the firepit after I took her seat after she got up and left to use the restroom because it was closer to the warm fire. NGL, it was hilarious but also like 5% traumatizing 🤣. BTW, if anyone here ever decides to visit the campsite by Lake Siskiyou, just a FYI, the squirrels there are not afraid of humans. If they know you have food, they turn into some hardcore spangers lol. I left some tortillas in my pack and one of them chewed a hole though it and ate some; I had to patch that up with some gorilla tape 😠.
I left Mt. Shasta on Tuesday night (the 23rd). @Jerrell took me back to Dunsmuir where I caught a train outta there going south. I was hoping to make it to Stockton so I could visit my best friend who lives nearby in Tracy for his birthday. He's a housie who lives in the suburbs with his parents and they were ok with me spending a few days there and I was super happy to be able to see him again and get a shower and a bed. When the train was just outside of Roseville around 7 AM, it stopped at a red signal for ~30 minutes and in retrospect, I should have gotten off there where it was nice and cool in the morning; you are about to see why. I called in a trace on the grainer I was riding on and UP said it was going to City of Industry down in LA. I thought this meant the train would eventually proceed through the Roseville yard and onto Stockton, but boy was I wrong. When the train pulled into the Roseville yard, it stopped and I waited hoping it would continue. I fell asleep for ~2 hours and when I woke up it was already around 90 degrees outside. I got lazy and decided to wait longer and not leave the yard or try to catch another train in that yard because I assumed it would eventually continue on and I didn't want to leave the shade of the end of the grainer. The train eventually pulled forward and then backwards past a trainyard worker who had some over-the-ear headphones on and was singing out loud. I realized based on some signs around the yard that I was now in the hump yard. After the train passed the worker, I saw that it got disconnected and was slowly going down the tracks of the hump yard. The grainer car eventually stopped with a mild bump, but there was a tanker car approaching it ready to hump it. I held on for dear life and my god when that tanker hit my grainer, the bump was so heavy and loud that my ears started ringing for like 15 seconds afterwards. I didn't know what to do at that point, so I just waited till enough cars were attached that the seismic action of the train cars humping each other wasn't so severe. I threw my stuff off the train and proceeded to exit the yard anyway I safely could. At that point I didn't give a fuck if anyone saw me, but some trainyard workers did see me. One of them waved at me and told me to come towards him, so I did. I told him I was just tryna leave and he said that I should be careful b/c I was not visible due to the lack of a reflective vest, I could get killed or lose some limbs, and that those white trucks there were the bulls and that I could be arrested for trespassing if I didn't leave. He then told me how to get out of the yard and pointed out the direction of the nearby Amtrak station. He didn't even ask for my ID or document the incident, which was one silver lining out of the situation. I then headed to the Amtrak station and caught a Thruway Bus to Sacramento where I got a Capitol Corridor ticket to Emeryville and asked my friend to pick me up there after he got off of work in San Jose.
While I was kinda bummed out about what happened, I did have an awesome ride on the Amtrak. I met this chick named Pony who works for CalFire and she bought us both a couple of White Claws. We then proceeded to get schwilly af on the train, we danced a little, swapped stories, and she even shared her Elf Bar vape with me. When we got off the train, I forgot my skateboard that @Jerrell gave me. (They found it 2 days later and I picked it up though.) Anyways, after we got off, we were both pretty drunk and we waited at the station for a few minutes until her bus to LA came. We hugged and parted ways, but I was still super schwilly by the time the station closed; my friend hadn't arrived yet so I crashed on a bench outside the station with my sleeping bag wrapped around my upper body like a poncho in the cold Bay Area weather. I was woken up sometime later by my friend who saw me still passed out on the bench and was like "are you ready to leave?" 😝 I then put my shit in his car and passed out again on the ride to his parent's house in Tracy where I'm at right now writing this post lol.
I'ma be heading down to San Diego on Monday the 29th...gonna homebum there till the end of September. Hopefully by then it will be cool enough to head onto Arizona and the south after that.
Safe Travels,
will-eee-um
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