Some words I wrote about myself

[Oddman]

Hello!
I found this forum a little while ago, and joined today to get some trainhopping advice. It looks like a great place, and I'll probably come to various parts of it a good amount.

I'm currently in college. I plan to use my college education to pay for my college education and then duck quietly out of the rat race. That is, unless the race ends first. I'm of the opinion that this civilization is in the process of some serious contraction, and that that's a good thing for the rest of the planet. You could call me a primitivist without a tribe or all the skills I'd like to have, though I'm working to fix both of those problems. I'll probably frequent the wilderness squatting section of this forum, although I'm also cutting back on my internet use, so we'll see how much I'm around.

Let's see, what else? I'm a little weird, as the name suggests, although I'm betting that around here, what most people call weird is unremarkable. I go barefoot just about everywhere (trainhopping will be excepted from this). I whistle a lot, and I can also make recognizable tunes by snapping my fingers at all different pitches. I'll just let anything else about me come up as it comes up.

See you around!

 

[Dmac]

great! i think you are in the right place. there is lots of trainhopping info on here. and if you can not find it in a fourum, there are several people on here who would know the answer to your questions.

 

[Oddman]

I'm pretty far away from any coasts here in the middle of Iowa. When I'm not at college I live in Cincinnati. I haven't declared a major yet, but it's probably going to be anthropology. I'm often pretty indecisive. I didn't pick which college I was going to until halfway through the day the decision was due. It was a hard decision.

Anyone happen to have any tips about yards in Cincinnati? I know Duffy Littlejohn's book lists Queensgate yard as a hot one, although he did write that a while ago. I don't know if it'd be better to start a thread in the hopping section to ask this. Asking here I guess I save space.

 

[Angela]

Welcome. Hope that you came to the right place. I don't want to depress you or anything but I hope that college your at isn't costing you very much or the chances of paying for your education with your education are kind of depressing. Regarding your later post on this thread, that book by Littlejohn is pretty outdated and wasn't that accurate in alot of ways even when he first wrote it.

 

[dirty_rotten_squatter]

welcome! youll learn pretty much everything you need to know about anything on here.have you done any kind of squatting or traveling at all?

 

[Oddman]

I haven't done anything you could legitimately call squatting yet. I've camped while employed at a summer camp, but that doesn't really count (though at least the trips weren't just overnight deals - my longest were 5 days). It's because I didn't really get much of an interest in it until this year, and I'm still in school, so I kinda have to wait for the summer. Which isn't too bad, because it'll be warmer. Also, I don't have to wait for summer to practice my hopping-on-the-fly skills with the slow trains that come through my college's town. I plan to hop at least one before the year is up, and probably more.

Regarding paying off college by getting a job with my degree: More precisely, my plan is to live a really minimalistic lifestyle, possibly squatting or something not too far away from it, and in that way minimalize my costs so I can pay off college quicker. If I really needed to, I suppose I could just walk away from the debt, but I think most things would be easier to do if I didn't have a warrant out to be put into debtors' prison or whatever. Besides which, I do feel like it's the right thing to do to pay back my college for the excellent education it's giving me. It's a friendly and free-thinking college, and my life has changed greatly for the better since I came here. (For one thing, I've learned how to think freer. If I'd just stayed at home, I probably would be confined in a lot more mental boxes that I've broken out of by now.)

So, what about Littlejohn's book is inaccurate/outdated?

 

[Oddman]

Shit I should start a new thread for that book sometime... You need to look at the book as just a fun read really not a 'Guide'... Duffy is a lawyer in California that has a very surfer dude attitude.... He really just did a bit or riding in the 80's and 90's and then he wrote that book as a money making venture.

I haven't cracked that book in sometime but the first thing that comes to mind is that I believe he talks about 'rolling crew changes' in the book but in reality they have not done that since the late 70's in the US but he talks about it like it is still going on...

I feel really confident that if I really sat down that took the book apart I could find at least 20-30 inaccurate things in it and that's not counting the just outdated stuff.

That would be awesome, actually. I've lent the book to a few of my friends who may or may not come along with me for some of my summer, and it'd be good to let them know where the book isn't as on-the-money as we need it to be.