FC's Journal #18 - July 5, 2003 - 11:42 am
Well, I got back last night from Kansas City. My buddy Tox has a weekly trucking route to KC. He invited me along, and I thought it would be fun and one more adventure for the summer, and besides, I wasn't doing anything better. So we went there and back without incident. It was kinda' cool though, hanging out and listening to old hardcore and metal tapes that we hadn't listened to for years. Tomorrow Axel and I are planning on hopping out to La Crosse in the mid-afternoon. There we will either meet Bart and Lindso or wait for them to arrive, and then catch back to Minneapolis. This next week we will mostly just hang out and fuck around in the city, maybe go urban exploring or caving or something of the like... Then next weekend we want to hop up to Superior (and Duluth) for the weekend. We're gonna' wait for the weekend 'cause we want Axel to be able to go with... The last few days of relaxation has been fun, but I'm starting to get itchy feet again, as they say. I'm so apathetic and lethargic here at my parent's place...
Last night I walked home from the cities. Some kids either shot a paintball gun at me or fired something from a slingshot... I couldn't tell for sure. Whatever it was, I felt the projectile go past me, it was that close. The suburbs are such a weird place... I mean, I've traveled to inner city slums of Chicago, San Francisco, and Oakland. I've slept under bridges. I've been in some bad situations where I should fear for my life somewhat. Yet the only place I get personally attacked is in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Fucking white suburban kids that have nothing better to do than attack random people... As a society we vilify the minority areas of town as crime-ridden. We paint pictures of black and brown men as people that would rob and stab and kill you. White kids are considered the hope of the next generation... And who is that I fear more? Who is it that has repeatedly demonstrated that they are more dangerous? Who is it that won't be disciplined and prosecuted? It pisses me off... In all honesty, I fear white kids many times more than I fear the random black guy. Anyway, enough of that rant... Here is the final update about my west coast trip... I wrote it a few days back:
Yesturday I decided I would sit down and write about all the rest of the updates following Dunsmuir that I haven't gotten around to. Heh... I guess I had forgotten that I have a bit of 'diarrhea of the mouth' when it comes to typing stories out. Um, yeah, I guess I'm gonna' try and quickly go through all the rest of the updates now 'cause the update I was writing is currently about four pages long and I haven't even gotten out of Dunsmuir yet.... I'm almost thinking of sitting down sometime (whenever I settle down next... if I settle down at some point) and writing something of a book about all my travels. I'm not gonna' try and publish it or anything like that, but maybe put out a 'zine or something like that. Anyway, I've got so many stories and such at this point that I'm not joking when I think I could fairly easily write a hundred pages (seriously, this is about the low end... Maybe a few hundred, I dunno') about this trip alone. So, yeah, that's a little off in the future, so for now I'm gonna' try and leave the update to a fairly quick email. That having been said, here's what happened after Dunsmuir...
Butternut and Arky split up. She was gonna' go to the redwoods for a while while Arky and I headed up to Portland to hang out with John. In a few days he would catch back down south to Roseville to meet up with her. Anyway, Arky and I walked to the train yard and bumped into another tramp there named Sam. We waited all night before finally something came blasting through in the early morning. It didn't stop. We walked further down the way to find a better place to wait. Finally in the afternoon we got on a boxcar on a train that sat on the mainline for hours. They broke the train in half quite literally before we took off headed north. We stopped in Black Butte, which is about twenty miles north of Dunsmuir. We had seen another tramp on a boxcar ahead of ours. While they worked the train, adding another string onto it, I ran up to his boxcar and we talked for a few minutes. He and his dog walked back to our boxcar to hang out with us. Just a few minutes later a whole bunch of other tramps started coming out of the woodwork. A total of thirteen of us and one dog were partying on this boxcar for a few minutes. Then the train aired up... Some people got off 'cause they were gonna' hang out in Black Butte for a few days before heading out again. When the train left we had eight folks and a dog on board. As we passed out of the yard, we saw a bunch of naked tramps running around... Crazy SoCal kids, getting naked at every opportunity. We headed out over the mountain passes. Mount Shasta filled the view out of the side of the boxcar. Even in the middle of July, much of the peak is covered in snow. It's soooo beautiful. We hung out until we made to Klamath Falls.
K Falls had a bit of a reputation as a yard you didn't wanna' fuck around in back in the day... But the old bull, one by the name of Roger, had retired just a few weeks previous. We felt pretty comfortable about coming through... Most of us had gone through K Falls on our way down and we had no problem. We pulled in just as the sun was setting. We hid in the corners of the boxcar. As we pulled through slowly, a switchman happened to glance in our boxcar. He shined his flashlight inside and saw us, but we waved to him. In most yards, workers couldn't care less about trespassers. So I didn't think we had been caught or anything by this. As it turns out, he called us in to the bull, and the bull called the cops for backup. We didn't know this... The train worked the yard for a few minutes. Arky got off and asked a worker if we were gonna' be cut out. Don't worry, he said. The train would be leaving shortly. After the train backed into the yard, our boxcar stopped right in front of the yard office. In a moment we could see flashlight beams on the walls of the car as the cops approached. We had one of those nanoseconds of fright before we saw the cops. Two stood on each side of the car (we had both doors open) with flashlights in one hand and guns drawn. They called out to us to show our hands, and when we did they said to grab our gear and get off. We sat down next to the yard office. They ran our ID's and lectured us a little, but mostly were fairly nice to us. The one exception would be when they ran Arky and my's ID and found warrants in Atlanta for the both of us... Then they came across a little more about Arky. The one cop was so upset he was shaking... Hahaha... Mostly they treated this as old hat to both them and us... Some of the folks riding with us had never been arrested before, so they were a little shaken up, but for the likes of Arky and I, we were all but bored with this. Anyway, they took our personal property and cuffed us and drove us to the local police station.
We spent the night in little booking cells as they ran us through the booking process of IDing and fingerprinting and the like... Arky and I were placed in the same cell. We entertained ourselves (and the other prisoners and jailers) for an hour or two by dressing up in costumes and performing... The cell had pads on the ground for us to sleep on and a blanket for each of them. We dressed in the blankets as Superman, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, a matador and bull, an old woman, and various others... At one point Arky put the blanket on as a hood and started screeching like an alien at another prisoner that happened to be walking by... He scared the shit out of the poor guy. The dude jumped away from the cell. Anyway, we had a good ole' time with trying to let the jailers let us go to the bathroom while we were dressed up. The food sucked, like usual. In the morning Sam got put in our cell as well... He didn't want to be there with us as we were both causing a little bit of trouble. He wanted to try to be as nice as possible to try and expedite his getting released. At one point he commented that he was praying that he was gonna' go before the judge before the two of us did, especially before Arky did. But he did eat well while he stayed with us... At every meal, almost nothing was vegetarian/vegan, so he got all of our leftovers.
In the afternoon we went before the judge, or rather, before a video of the judge. The courthouse was on the other side of town and they didn't want to drive us over there, so they just video relayed the judge to us and us to him. They offered us a nice deal... Plead guilty to Criminal Trespassing and they would give us time served and no fines, with the one stipulation being to stay off railroad property for six months. We all plead guilty and took the deal. A couple hours later we were all released. After hunting around some to get our personal property back, we had to make it over to UP to get our gear back. It was the afternoon and we wanted to get there before they closed so we wanted to get going... As we walked down the road from the jail a painted truck passed by. Arky stuck his thumb out and the guy did a U-turn. He said for us to all pile in the back and he would drive us wherever we needed to go. He dropped us off at the UP office. He was super nice... He drove us clear across town, totally out of the way he was headed. The really funny thing was that when he picked us up we were standing in front of a sign that said 'Do not pick up hitch-hikers' as we were still in front of the jail...
We talked to some of the workers at UP while we got our gear back. The one guy casually mentioned that, ‘Oh, and by the way, the bull isn't here today. He's working in Eugene.’ This was a good thing for us to hear. It meant that, first, it would be alright if we caught out of K Falls, and second, that if we went through Eugene, we should stay low profile... Well, I decided I was gonna' do just that. After we hung out for a while, Arky and I went our separate ways. He was gonna' hitch-hike south to make it back to Sacto to meet with Butternut. We had wasted too much time in the Dunsmuir yard and in jail and he was gonna' have to be headed south too soon to justify continuing up north. I walked down the line of cars only to see another train ready to pull into the yard. I bumped into Sam. He was waiting for a northbound as well.
I left my gear with him while I ran up to the store to get supplies. When I got back we jumped on a northbound boxcar. It didn't leave for a while, but when it did we promptly fell asleep and slept the night away. The train pulled into Eugene early the next morning. Immediately it became apparent that our train wasn't gonna' be going anywhere for a long time. The train pulled into the middle of the yard, away from the mainline and departure tracks and cut power. We got off and walked over to the mainline side of the yard and walked off of their property. As we walked down towards the middle of the yard, we watched a northbound pig train pull in on the mainline. We knew that it would be waiting for only a little while and would be a fast ride. After some discussion (Sam had never ridden pigs before) we walked to the train and found a nice ride. We decided to hang out in the ditch next to the car until the train aired up as we didn't want to be seen on the car. Well, before long the train aired and we jumped on. We crammed ourselves and our gear under the axels of the semi and the train pulled out of the yard. We blasted along out of the yard and onward towards Portland.
After a couple hours we were nearing Portland. I was a little jumpy from getting caught in K Falls still, plus it was daytime, we were on a pig, and headed into a semi-hot yard. I wanted to get off the train the first chance we got. The train slowed to a crawl about two or three miles south of the Brooklyn yard... I readied my gear and was gonna' hop off when Sam said he didn't think we should get off until the train slowed down. We were going about five miles an hour! We couldn't get much slower... Anyway, he convinced me to stay on. I'm not trying to put blame on Sam here, but the truth is that we wouldn't have gotten caught if I had followed my instinct and gotten off... We finally started nearing the yard when I saw a vehicle driving the train. We stashed our gear under the semi and hung off the far side of the pig, hoping that we wouldn't be seen. Well, seen we were as the truck pulled alongside our car. There was no doubt that this wasn't a random worker either, seeing as they had nice red and blue lights flashing and the driver was saying something over the loud speaker. Fuck this... We bailed off the other side of the train. We grabbed our gear and ran into the golf course next to the tracks... We ran past people playing golf and hid under some trees. A few minutes later, we saw the driver running across the golf course, his gun drawn. He asked some golfers where we went, and they were nice enough to point to our trees... He yelled at us to come slowly out with our hands up. We complied. He asked us where we had warrants... We said that we didn't (other than my little one in Atlanta) and that the only reason we ran was because we had gotten caught in K Falls just the day before. After that he was a pretty nice guy, joking with us and asking us how Hobofest was. He was nice enough to not give us a Resisting Arrest charge or something similar to that. I think part of the reason he was cool with us was that he realized that neither of us were new to this. We both had prior arrests on railroad property... It's kinda' funny. When you first start riding, the bulls treat you like shit 'cause they want to scare you into not riding. But when you have a little bit of experience they sometimes kinda' respect what you're doing and just accept it. Anyway, he ticketed us and let us go.
Sam and I parted ways with the understanding that we should get the hell out of town ASAP 'cause we may have just broken our probation. He said he was gonna' try and be in the midwest for Trampfest. Anyway, I walked downtown and contacted an old friend, John. John was nice enough to put me up for most of the next week. I didn't really do much while I was in Portland though... But, I have brought myself up to date now. I think the updates I have written previously started again once I was in Portland.
FC's Journal #19 - July 7, 2003 - 1:40 pm
Axel and I headed La Crosse and back... It was fairly uneventful. We went to the BNSF Midway yard in St. Paul and had to wait all of about half an hour before an eastbound pig train pulled in. It kinda' blew past where we were, but we ran down to it and found a decent ride near the end of the train. We were a little weirded out by a vehicle we could see patrolling the end of the train, but it was probably just workers and, besides, we had no problem. We did end up waiting in the weeds by the train until it started moving as it was day and we wanted to stay low profile... It wasn't long. The train moved about a mile further down the track and waited again for a while... This seems to be the SOP for eastbound pig trains... Anyway, we hung out under different semis axels until the train took off again. Axel said he saw the bull when we left the yard, but I didn't see anyone. Anyway, we blasted through Pig's Eye and headed over the road. We got to La Crosse a couple hours later. The Mpls to LC crew change is such a joke... Trains have a maximum of ten hours to get to the next CC point before the crews must be switched. Why go only 130 miles before switching crews? I dunno'... Trains are weird. Trying to understand why trains operate the way they do is like a dog trying to understand why humans act like we do... It makes no sense sometimes... I've seen a number of unbreakable rules broken so far this summer: IM trains sitting in the hole for five hours at a time, GM trains blocking the mainline for hours, trains being broken in half instead of being cut apart, trains with multiple manifest types throughout the train, et al.
Anyway, we got to LC, no problem. We wandered around for a few hours looking for a gas station that didn't exist. We dumpstered a Frito-Lay place without much luck: three small bags of chips. We tried to find the dumpsters at a Kwik-Trip compound (it's huge), but couldn't find them. Then we slept under a bridge right on the east side of the BN yard. It rained off and on most of the next day... In the early morning we got a message from Bart saying that he and Lindso had missed their train from Chicago. The plan had been to meet us in LC and then continue to Mpls with us. Oh well... We would head back home and hope they caught through later. We waited for a while to find something headed back to Mpls... Tons of traffic came through. It's a sea of pig trains out there compared to DS trains... We saw only about one stack train come by each way during the night, but a bunch of pig trains came by (and a few GM as well, including one Norfolk Southern GM train... Do they share trackage on the BN main?) After about six hours a westbound pig train pulled in. We ran back, but it did a hella' quick CC: it sat there for about two minutes before airing up and heading about two hundred feet towards the yard. Then it sat for another two minutes and then took off. We jumped on a pig on the fly (it wasn't going very fast yet). We headed back to Mpls, no problem. Soon the weather turned nice. By the time we got twenty miles out of LC there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Our train stopped for clearance before entering the Midway yard. We got off and walked back to Axel's van. All told, we were gone for less than a day, I believe. Talk about a quick trip... Anyway, last I heard, Bart and Lindso are gonna' try and hop here tonight. Have fun with the rain, heh... Hope you've got your bivy sacks... Yeah, I hope all is well out there... Oh, and by the way, I've been informed that Trampfest is going to be on the weekend of the 16th and 17th of August, not the 9th and 10th as I have previously stated... It will still be in Superior, WI and all that... I just had the dates wrong. Okay, peace out, yo. ---FC