Persistence
Member
It is this past July, and I've just arrived in Needles, CA after a grueling slog hitchhiking Route 66 from Flagstaff. My destination is Santa Monica and I remember shaking my head at the sign just outside of Needle sternly declaring: "Los Angeles 254 Miles". The temperature is easily ninety to one hundred degrees and it's all me and my poor three month old (black-furred) puppy Chelsea can do but to sit in the shade in resigned defeat, pondering how we're going to get out of *this one* and finally get to Santa Monica. Even trying to hitch feels like a foregone conclusion at this point because my dog starts panting like a steam engine everytime we leave the shade for more than twenty minutes and there is zero shade near any obvious place to make an attempt.
For roughly three days we sit where ever shade can be found, myself drinking copiously and wondering if I really knew what I was getting into when I started this whole traveling thing in breezy New Orleans six months prior. It's in this near-catatonic state that Eric and Fleabag discover me. After shooting the shit for a few minutes it's obvious they've already made me for what I am: an exhausted greenhorn in over his head. Despite this, they quickly offer to take me on a train after I communicate my intentions of going to Santa Monica. Wait 'til night fall, they say, and we'll catch an IM train to the Colton yard, only an hour or so away from LA.
A little background here: this was not my first time riding, but my two prior rides had been an aborted attempt from Gainsville, TX that ended with me and my road-dogs at the time, Rags and Journey, getting pulled off in Oklahoma ten miles from the nearest anything, and then another hellish ride on a coal train out of Denver with Rags and Azrin that we waited three days to catch and ended up dropping power and leaving us in La Junta. Naturally, I was eager to experience what I thought of at the time as a "complete" ride: A ride that went where it was said to be going and that I chose to get off, rather than being forced. I know this is a silly sentiment but that was my headspace at the time.
So we head to the yard around midnight, three dogs and their kids in tow, the night air is blessedly cool. After just an hour it seems too good to be true as Eric comes hustling back and says he's found us a badass ride about to leave. We scramble across the tracks and I encounter my first pig-with-wings. I hand my dog up to Fleabag then clamber up myself. Eric and Fleabag have claimed the semi-trailer's wheel wheels on either side of the car so me and Chelsea relax as best we can on the metal piece in-between. The gaping holes on either side of me unnerve me at first until I convince myself that they're not physically wide enough to fall through. A few minutes later, just as promised, the slack lets out and we set off on our merry way, and after awhile the motion of the car lulls us all asleep.
I sleep fitfully through the night, occasionally having to figure out inventive and acrobatic ways to help my 6'4 frame piss underneath the trailer. When we all finally wake up, it's bright out and the train is still hauling ass at a steady sixty to seventy mph clip. This is the first moment of apprehension. Though my brain isn't a perfect atlas I know the distance from Needles to LA isn't terribly far, but my unsurety about how long we slept and what time we got on keep me quiet. Looking out though, Eric notices we seem to be passing through a large city and an Amtrak station is approaching; he asks me to poke my head out and see the station name. I duely oblige, and when I read "Bakersfield" my stomach drops like a stone. At this point in my career my grasp on exact locations of cities in California is nebulous but even I know that Bakersfield is in eastern California and nowhere near LA.
I communicate these thoughts rapid-fire to Eric, and with the best pokerface I've ever seen he coolly replies that the train is "just taking the long way around". Eager for any hope that this train's course is still salvageable I relax and settle back in. It's not 'til I read off the name on Fresno's Amtrak station that I concede Eric may have made a mistake about the train's destination. I don't say anything more, what's the point? Many, many hours later the train finally starts slowing down and then finally stops in a medium-ish yard. We wait awhile: all of us are low on water though (I'm completely out and have been bumming drinks for me and Chelsea off the others), ravenously hungry and starting to wonder if it could be going further still.
Wordlessly, as if by telepathic order, the three of us quickly gather up our gear and egress when the train shows no sign of leaving anytime soon. Squinting in the sunlight, my heart sinks as I realize we're in an IM yard. My old mentor Rags warned me many times to avoid these places as being caught in them usually meant going to jail, and slipping out unnoticed was difficult. To hungry and thirsty to care, we resign ourselves to whatever happens and start trudging toward the half-open gate. By some stroke of fortune no one at this yard seems to care, two trucks and a yard-dog passing right by us with no comment other than what appears to be some pointing and laughing from one vehicle, and we make it out.
It's at this point we start wondering where the hell we are. I scan all around us, straining my eyes, but all I can see are fields, dusty roads, a few small office buildings, and what appears to be an air traffic control tower with a bizarrely-compact airport built around it. We're flummoxed, seeing no signs of restaurants or even a gas station, so we start trying to hitchhike into town, where ever that may be, after walking out to the main road. Maybe twenty minutes go by before three sheriffs pull up around us and get out. The sheriffs quickly enlighten us to the fact that the funny-looking airport I saw was a prison and that we probably won't have any luck hitching around here. They run our names and after we all invariably come up clean they turn to leave, when I remember at the last minute to ask them *where* we are in the first place. The woman cop says "Stockton". The full gravity of this doesn't sink in 'til much later when I finally look at a map of California and realize how hilariously hard we overshot.
We eventually find a cluster of gas stations and fast food places, and though they invite me to hitch north with them to Roseville, where they insist I'll have an easy time finding a train down to Colton, I'm too spooked from our ride to oblige. We exchange pleasantries and I steel myself for a long hitch south through parts unknown that I'm soon to learn compromises some of the shittiest cities and temperatures in California. Trudging down the 99, dog in tow, I notice a sign dead-ahead, sternly proclaiming: "Los Angeles 340 Miles". All I could do was laugh at this absurd train that had deposited me a hundred miles further away from my destination than where I started from, and keep walking.
((I've ridden several trains since, a few solo, and am pretty confident in myself now that I don't need my hand held to ride. I still have a metric fuckton of shit to learn but I don't feel like a liability anymore.))
For roughly three days we sit where ever shade can be found, myself drinking copiously and wondering if I really knew what I was getting into when I started this whole traveling thing in breezy New Orleans six months prior. It's in this near-catatonic state that Eric and Fleabag discover me. After shooting the shit for a few minutes it's obvious they've already made me for what I am: an exhausted greenhorn in over his head. Despite this, they quickly offer to take me on a train after I communicate my intentions of going to Santa Monica. Wait 'til night fall, they say, and we'll catch an IM train to the Colton yard, only an hour or so away from LA.
A little background here: this was not my first time riding, but my two prior rides had been an aborted attempt from Gainsville, TX that ended with me and my road-dogs at the time, Rags and Journey, getting pulled off in Oklahoma ten miles from the nearest anything, and then another hellish ride on a coal train out of Denver with Rags and Azrin that we waited three days to catch and ended up dropping power and leaving us in La Junta. Naturally, I was eager to experience what I thought of at the time as a "complete" ride: A ride that went where it was said to be going and that I chose to get off, rather than being forced. I know this is a silly sentiment but that was my headspace at the time.
So we head to the yard around midnight, three dogs and their kids in tow, the night air is blessedly cool. After just an hour it seems too good to be true as Eric comes hustling back and says he's found us a badass ride about to leave. We scramble across the tracks and I encounter my first pig-with-wings. I hand my dog up to Fleabag then clamber up myself. Eric and Fleabag have claimed the semi-trailer's wheel wheels on either side of the car so me and Chelsea relax as best we can on the metal piece in-between. The gaping holes on either side of me unnerve me at first until I convince myself that they're not physically wide enough to fall through. A few minutes later, just as promised, the slack lets out and we set off on our merry way, and after awhile the motion of the car lulls us all asleep.
I sleep fitfully through the night, occasionally having to figure out inventive and acrobatic ways to help my 6'4 frame piss underneath the trailer. When we all finally wake up, it's bright out and the train is still hauling ass at a steady sixty to seventy mph clip. This is the first moment of apprehension. Though my brain isn't a perfect atlas I know the distance from Needles to LA isn't terribly far, but my unsurety about how long we slept and what time we got on keep me quiet. Looking out though, Eric notices we seem to be passing through a large city and an Amtrak station is approaching; he asks me to poke my head out and see the station name. I duely oblige, and when I read "Bakersfield" my stomach drops like a stone. At this point in my career my grasp on exact locations of cities in California is nebulous but even I know that Bakersfield is in eastern California and nowhere near LA.
I communicate these thoughts rapid-fire to Eric, and with the best pokerface I've ever seen he coolly replies that the train is "just taking the long way around". Eager for any hope that this train's course is still salvageable I relax and settle back in. It's not 'til I read off the name on Fresno's Amtrak station that I concede Eric may have made a mistake about the train's destination. I don't say anything more, what's the point? Many, many hours later the train finally starts slowing down and then finally stops in a medium-ish yard. We wait awhile: all of us are low on water though (I'm completely out and have been bumming drinks for me and Chelsea off the others), ravenously hungry and starting to wonder if it could be going further still.
Wordlessly, as if by telepathic order, the three of us quickly gather up our gear and egress when the train shows no sign of leaving anytime soon. Squinting in the sunlight, my heart sinks as I realize we're in an IM yard. My old mentor Rags warned me many times to avoid these places as being caught in them usually meant going to jail, and slipping out unnoticed was difficult. To hungry and thirsty to care, we resign ourselves to whatever happens and start trudging toward the half-open gate. By some stroke of fortune no one at this yard seems to care, two trucks and a yard-dog passing right by us with no comment other than what appears to be some pointing and laughing from one vehicle, and we make it out.
It's at this point we start wondering where the hell we are. I scan all around us, straining my eyes, but all I can see are fields, dusty roads, a few small office buildings, and what appears to be an air traffic control tower with a bizarrely-compact airport built around it. We're flummoxed, seeing no signs of restaurants or even a gas station, so we start trying to hitchhike into town, where ever that may be, after walking out to the main road. Maybe twenty minutes go by before three sheriffs pull up around us and get out. The sheriffs quickly enlighten us to the fact that the funny-looking airport I saw was a prison and that we probably won't have any luck hitching around here. They run our names and after we all invariably come up clean they turn to leave, when I remember at the last minute to ask them *where* we are in the first place. The woman cop says "Stockton". The full gravity of this doesn't sink in 'til much later when I finally look at a map of California and realize how hilariously hard we overshot.
We eventually find a cluster of gas stations and fast food places, and though they invite me to hitch north with them to Roseville, where they insist I'll have an easy time finding a train down to Colton, I'm too spooked from our ride to oblige. We exchange pleasantries and I steel myself for a long hitch south through parts unknown that I'm soon to learn compromises some of the shittiest cities and temperatures in California. Trudging down the 99, dog in tow, I notice a sign dead-ahead, sternly proclaiming: "Los Angeles 340 Miles". All I could do was laugh at this absurd train that had deposited me a hundred miles further away from my destination than where I started from, and keep walking.
((I've ridden several trains since, a few solo, and am pretty confident in myself now that I don't need my hand held to ride. I still have a metric fuckton of shit to learn but I don't feel like a liability anymore.))
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