june 22

while living along the tracks in troutdale i work first at a lube shop over in fairview, then quit that a minute to go work as a welder a little further up lombard at a truck body manufacturer. dodging theft and bangers alike most weeks, hiding my things all over the place and sleeping in a different spot every few days. im doing alright, funds slowly but surely building in the bank account, and when taxes hit i finally have enough to go for an appartment — cheapest in pdx was 1k/mo with an extra k for initial downpayment.. but i scratch that and just walk away one day, 5 minutes to clockout.. and make a Bline straight for the siding where i left my things.

new boots, new pack.. guitar, check, 3000 dollars.. and a fresh case of cold ones.. check. by 7 a doublestack pulls into the hole from the west for clearance, and im floating back up the columbia again watching the sun set over washington on the far side. this never gets old. 

i step off out in hinkle first, later that night, hoping to find the swimming hole out there near the yard a friend had told me about. next day find a vine that looks an awful lot like poison ivy creeping in mounds all up and down that stretch of the banks and wind up restocking on beer instead over in stanwood and catching another im back out of there, rolling out of the east throat of the yard, next day. as soon as my phone caught signal again though i discovered that that vine id mistaken for ivy was in fact something else altogether, after some googling, and that i couldve waded through it all to the water no problem.

next, i stop over in la grande to spend a day by the river there up by the bridge. its like a nice cross between dunsmuir and klamath falls here, and the river so deep and green its perfect for a quiet little dip before carrying on up the overland. i practice clumsily a few songs there and once in town and then im on my merry way again to pocatello. had only just bought this guitar the previous summer out in missoula and never much had time to dig it out of its hiding place in the woods to play it while i was working up dinero.. so this was my first clumsy steps along the fretboard, finding my way along, the first of many on that trip. couldnt even remember how to sing along yet just then and it was a frustrating endeavor relearning how. it was looking more like a drinking tour to me at that juncture, rather than a busking one, just then. easy does it.

pocatello im only there to switch over to a manifest and avoid the rail police. hanging out with this couple by the burger king on the way, hiding in the shade. 

so its a drinking tour alright, but i do meet a guy. this dude i already know, technically.

my gm takes me past green river to rock springs, ten miles over. only some of the gms do this, or possibly all of them do bc it happens every time im not on the other thing. they stop on this siding thats like, in the middle of town.. only theres this marshland between you and it — just a matter of 100 feet to the left, shopping centers, motels, restaurants, all of it — and the only way across is at the overpass a whole mile further east. so you find yourself right next to the main drag but still a good 2 miles away from it too, cursing god and sundry as the horseflies come munching on your cooked ass marching over the suncooked sand and ballast thirstier than hell.

my phone croaks that night and i spend the night at the super eight next to the walmart where i drop another three bucks on a new one, spending half the following day getting my number transferred from at&t to verizon bc they never heard of no damn at&t in wyoming. then, this put right finally, i thumb it back up the highway to green river.

seeing as how my funds are already beginning to drwindle, between all the regearing i did before leaving off in pdx a week prior, all the drinking, and then some.. my intentions set originally for wind river are already beginning to waver. id read about wind river canyon in one of aaron dactyls railroad semantics issues some years prior and although it sounded like a plan, id no way of knowing just how many weeks more itd take me to figure out the details, north of cheyenne. so, back in green river, im naturally equally as contented with hanging around the west side of the yard as the east.. and vice versa. maybe west again and north to seattle, who knows but the wind, now.

i go for beverages then find myself wandering down to the wbd place, the blue skies of it already darkening behind me, and in the distance through the cooling steely grey i make out a figure. what appears to be a naked man standing around by the cp box / “tower”. ‘well, it really was just about that hot out here a minute ago, ig..’ i think to myself. i set down my shit in the brush nearby and can see immediately its not in fact just some crackhead local this time. guys coming from denver he says and seems to have ridden a decent bit of the map. after a while even begins to sound vaguely familiar — where do i know this dude from? and it isnt until well into the night i figure it out. hes that one kid from that travel forum. the greenhorn. or was.

we talk trains for hours. hes waiting for a wbd to pull through but none do, and eventually sacks out for the night. me im on a real bender, at least a week drunk, approaching a pleasant sort of manic state and not tired in the least just sit up well into the following morning before making another pit stop up at the mavericks for another couple 40s and a full case on top of that. 

some time after sun up we string my tarp up against the highest stakes of sage available and sit behind that for the remainder. this guy aint bad. evens got a mandolin.. i finally pose the question. why not chill a few days more and maybe put something together to busk with. why not, i think im headed back now anyway bc the heats starting to make me nervous — which was true too, id legit never been further east than poky, on the overland, but for in the fall and winter and the heat was getting to be unexpectedly miserable. cheyenne, likely equally parched and all its asphalt, did not sound like a fun time on my last 1000 bucks. not like he had much choice in the matter though, he was going that way already.

that evening a young couple of riders filter over and settle in next to us in the shadows. they start talking about intermodals through pocatello and i waste a few incredulous breaths muttering about the bull there and jailtime before laughing back to my 40 oz.. fine then. we will all go to jail together then, i dont have my glock on me so what do i care another misdemeanor.. have it your way.

an intermodal arrives soon after and we all climb aboard. i scream some alcohol fueled soliloquies into the wind, feeling at long last, a decent nap coming on. the insomnic euphoria of a massive serotonin dump over 48 hours catching up to me finally, enroute. 

i wake to the absence of sound as soon as we slow, noiselessly as a schooner out of the bay, to a halt. a bird. the rumor of a breeze slips by out of the soft rolling hills nearby, the dawn just breaching over the rise. ill be damned, they were right. but if they werent, i wasnt awake to see them get pulled — we never saw them again. 

walking up to the sinclair mano mandolin tosses a little ziplock bag into the brush at the shoulder. i remember idaho isnt legal yet. 

beer refilled, we retire to the park just a way further on, where a cop wanders through to run our IDs. vigilant pricks. ya cant blame them, but ya cant not hate their ass for it either. Still just hapf through my first beer of the day, and languishing somewhere in my wild, half cooked, lingering hangover i get all broken up suddenly.. thinking about all the times id been accused of shit i didnt do else looked at suspiciously, but mostly just having a minor panick attack about the glock id left by accident in a college parking lot back in portland which i was still waiting to hear back about from officer whoever. there was always the possibility theyd make me a felon, once they got around to it. so i sit there all teary eyed venting to this fellow about it, way out of my head on a hangover as usual. one more beer and ill be back in business again, my brains just fried like an egg first.. always, in that liminal river lethe from sunnyside up wrecked, to buzzed, to drunk again.

anyways we move over to the other side where theres a sort of culvert — i would not dignify this thing as so much as a creek its so slow and muddy. a mere channel, squire.. we folks from the pnw know only those waters which gush strate from the heavens, but it does not stop this man who hails from utah from having his way with it before dipping out to the latrine a minute. what with locals frolicking about all over the place and nowhere to pee conscientiously. back from which though bros pride has already suffered a crack, remarking something about these yuppies (my french) jeering him. i laugh.. the fishing hat and shades probably not helping the scruffy beard. the old bags had spied a homeless man, of which species theres not a great many around pocatello. women and children at the little park out back on a sunday bane. always a good laugh when someone else is suffering a thing youve yourself had the great pleasure by on many occasions. and all the more so when dude, like myself, may be so profiled somewhere in that subspecies between houseless — but not uncivilized — and employed (yet not, at this moment). in other words im learning that being mistaken for so much strikes a nerve in this fellow and its not entirely without a comical aspect.

we soon vacate, back the way we came, first breaking out our instruments for a bit of show and tell on the way to see what weve got. nothing doing we find the wbd hopout by the same slough, a ways back, instead. a spot id never known about actually, after all these years, nearly 7 of them by then.. heading west in a downpour id only ever known to just sit it out with my tarp draped over me like an absolute savage. so this wasnt half bad, not for shade either.

its not even 12 yet and mandolin mf goes directly to sleep,  saying he didnt sleep on the ride over. also hilarious, but i didnt push it — id been screaming pretty loud and long before passing out on the way, not thinking anybody even just a single car back would hear much of anything over the howling steel but if he did i could imagine it reasonable cause for never fully being able to drift off. id not really thought about it at the time as i always do that.. and now that i was just then, i had to stifle a laugh. ive been there before, too.

so i move off out of earshot with the guitar to do my thing. and there under a little elm tree by track one i find for a moment that rare combination of air, light, time and space, with not a little blood-alcohol to smite the ground beneath my feet.. inducing The Zone. like a bird taking flight for the first time i began to improvise.. and it felt wonderful. yes, i thought. wondering back over to the shade and the bridge.. yes, this is what i want to do.

i find a fortune cookie fortune slipped beneath a can of green beans on the ledge beneath that read ‘have you ever waited too long and missed out on something beautiful?’ in read text. the fuck does that mean.

mandolin o mang raises from the dead, simultaneously with a quart of vodka, in one motion like the whole.. sleeping part was just a momentary feature of the movement between the last pull and this one. dunking it as much onto his mouth than into it, as though to rinse off also. my stomache turns seeing this. ‘that.. jesus’ is all i admit. late noon. cheap vodka.. damn. man turns to me and in an almost urgent tone, serious as a heartbreak says ‘rob, do you believe in christ?’ 

alcohol does things to a mans mind after some days. your brain, i suppose, is being quite literally pickled. and you start having these sudden crises, of every genus denomination and description. sometimes a crises of conscience and other times its a more worldly affair that triggers it like waking up to find no more dinero in your britches. and no matter how sane and sound of mind you actually are in otherless intoxicated circumstances.. to any onlooker youre just plain crazy. sitting all alone in the corner drunk out of your everloving mind crying with your shirt smudged and ragged and one shoe missing.. crying tears of joy bc you think you just found god but really you just havent slept in days bc youve been having the best damn time of your life and forgot to eat something. and it was just this sort of thing that had just come over both of us, each of his own accord, wild eyed, studying the other uncomprehendingly.. me on the verge of realizing ive not cried enough over my sisters dying some ten years ago and he god knows what. just two madmen under a bridge entering some god-mode level of alcoholism maybe only the irish have ever reached, one cant be sure. but in different circumstances idve died laughing..

‘rob do you believe i christ’

‘..what? oh, no not really. i mean i guess. but have you ever waited so long you missed something beautiful?’

idve given us both medals of honor. or purple hearts one or the two.

anyways after some more similar nonsense conversation we migrate again closer to the sinclair. bc directly across the street from beer sounded better than a mile up the road from it after some careful deliberation. i eventually cant hold it back any longer about my sister and start bawling out of nowhere. alcohol folks.. messes you up sometimes. and when a unit grain pulls in i tell this bloke im getting on and ill see him in la grande. which puts me in some non-location called bliss, idaho, at one lone grainery next to the interstate which i try for a while to hitch but eventually wind up on another unit grain straight back to pocatello. whatever. at least it only put me out a day.

not long in poky for i get a cadillac that takes me to lagrande. but on the way my train gets robbed on some siding outside nampa, and while going through the beginnings of serious alcohol withdrawals, paranoia and whathave you, i legit thought i was going to die. but i make it to la grande in one piece anyhow. i jump in the water, the very same. 

i mosie back through town snagging a case of beer and find my friend by the tracks waiting for a westie.. as soon  as i get there hes yelling ‘FUUUUUUUU’ at this gm blowing straight through to cc a few miles up. happens all the time, happens to the best of us. but thats exactly why its hilarious — long as it aint you this time. and thats also why when you find your train airing up just as soon as youre walking up straight off work its nothing short of a miracle.

—

west through the blue mountains a few days later i wake up stopped on a siding in the thick of them somewhere, withdrawals again. but theres one house. just one, just across the way and theres a dude coming out of it to the driveway. i throw my shit off and running, just manage to get him as hes popping the clutch to reverse.. ‘ten dollars, i need alcohol, anything youve got’

guy sent me back with a whole case of coors and rolling off in a matter of minutes

it was afterall a drinking tour. and i got to the busking when i got there, eventually

when i think hole in the wall

i think this was 2013. december maybe. id just found work… no. no it wasnt that time it was when i came back from alaska. so it was august, right around when i met john payne.

i was sleeping in the fields by the airport. but i still had all this money from salmon season i didnt know what else to do with so i was at every bar just living it up while i looked for work.

i was wandering down grant ave one night, already drunk ofc. ive lived and breathed alcohol, especially then. but i look up at this little signt hanging over the sidewalk and it says ‘the lovecraft’. n im like ‘oh, no shit?’, and look in… no windows. all blacked out. but i do hear music, so i go in.

whom are these strange people.. that know of lovecraft. i must drink with them

its dark. blacklit. it kind of looks like a halloween party. a little stage with a dj, a few tables for dining on the other side of the room. the little bar between.. one almost wants to draw it but only bc there was so many people in there ig. maybe. in all blacklight.

i go to the bar and they have captain crunch cereal on the menu so i order some just because why not. then i order a doubleshot of absinthe.

its an all 80s night, i gathered, and had a few songs for the dj. but by this time im familiar with djs. they dont normally have anything thats not completely mainstream in their library so i kept it simple this time, asking a song by new order.

i sink back to the bar to watch people dance to my song with another doubleshot, as a homeless man, all my shit 10 miles out in some field by the airport.
i hadnt found any bibliophiles but i did find the 80s. and some hole in the wall that actually serves the devils licorice.

a couple of gals approach me at the bar and they ask me to come back into the hallway toward the restrooms im like sure whatever. there they explain that their friend thats getting married, presently to my right, has been dared to kiss a guy. on their bachelorette's party. i think oh man no wonder theres so many people in here.

i didnt. bc even way back then i felt like an old ass man and that she could do better but strolling out again a while later they just happened to be there and i said ill take you up on that anyways and i took her head in both hands and kissed her on the forhead and said i love you and youre beautiful and goodnight guys, instead

i was drunk as shit and i knew it. but only the first moment after that

respectfully; the afterthought

there was this old dude in klamath falls oregon that gave me work once a few years ago, flying a cardboard sign at my usual spot.

he drove me way out to his place on the rez, after renting a flatbed trailer, to pick up all the trash in his yard

all kinds. thousands of discarded bottles. beer, whiskey, broken equipment. broken everything. plates, bins full of rusted out tools that looked like theyd been drowning in there for decades

four hours and i had the whole damn lot bagged up and piled onto the trailer

he invited me inside for lunch but being that were way tf out in the boonies i refuse bc i aint armed and i just met this mf.

so we set on his porch for an hour or so, drinkin jack and soda. gettin nice and cooked, just sharing stories. told me about his family and his life. just us out there in the sticks

he drives me back and we go to the liquor store first, he buys me two pints of whiskey and then drops me back at the wally.

gives me a fat bonus over the flat rate and says maybe next time again brother.

i was thinking about all the people ive known that passed recently, earlier today.

i came back some months later wonderin if there was anything else.. he never answered my text or call.

and you know what? i think that motherfucker was just tryna get shit set up and presentable for his family when he died.

in my blackest brogue

turns out they got these little hotel type deals at hospitals for motherfuckers that are dyin and shit.. i just spent three days in one cause i got caught drinking.

you can like, order these gourmet meals up to your room by dialing 5000 and you got a different nurse checking in on you every hour to see what you want and make sure youre not doin anything freaky ig idk

hey whatchu doin in here oh.. niggasjust chillin readin a fuckin book

there was this little redhead nursethat came in and introduced herself first thing. like, i assumed it was thedoctor runnin the whole show or something cause she just gave me her name and blinked at me and then leftsayin shed be back later.

thinking about it now and holy shit hotdamn. she came back and did some nurse shit. me still thinking its thedoctor ofc

cause there was like 20 differentnurses after that

but damn i couldve stayed there foralmost a week just me and movies n books man just needed some fresh airso was like hey yo, im done nappin. n they let me go

pretty wild huh. i didnt know they did that

fuck it, put it on the blog

2017

Back from the memphis journey, or whatever that was, fresh off the sandlines m-fortworth to west colton junker i take com trans to go visit my mother a few weeks in escondido. and during this time find a couple of job opportunities on this website some chick in denver had told me about.. 'workaway'. one in the bay area and one further north in the puget sound. 

around the same time i was getting ready to head back out there was a post by a couple of fellow crusties about passing through to the bay from yuma in a vehicle.. i jump on this opportunity to taxi back up to colton. just had to meet them at salton sea, just 30 miles to the east. to avoid the heat i take off in the early evening to ruck the desert highway through the night, catching a few z's in the early morning upon reaching the station there.

younger people and a bit rambunctious for me, but we do some hanging around on the way up and it isnt all unpleasant, after a fair amount of drinking. 

they drop me next to the yard later in the night and i grab a northbound over the interstate from L.A loop next day no problem. a peaceful spot to wait, and you can essentially catch out to the east and west here also.. only its one of the most exhausting, at the same time — you have to book it through the sand some 100-200 yards up to the mains at the east throat and jump up into a box at a run with the last measure of air youve got left, as soon as you see it swing up and over and decide its got enough empty lumber to be sure its not a barstow/las vegas train. which has also happened and sucks.

anyways, i grab the right manifest and im in roseville 16 hours later. there, already acquainted with the new oakland cc point, im on the international stacks east for four or five hours through the early evening and sleep in some cranny next to the tracks there. next day a bus and a couple more over the golden gate to salsalito where i meet with this lone older gentleman living out of his little sloop anchored by the docks at the edge of richardson bay. and theres a little community of them, some 20-30 more, by the grace of whatever legal loophole, doing the same thing rent free there.

no pay and not much in the way of food. (he brought me to the bum feeds, where he had many friends.. himself also homeless. which i was in no way averse to and if nothing else this made him easier to relate to. but, in this man's listing on workaway he had expressed the desire to teach people how to sail. so i found this a worthy detour, on the way up the i5 corridor to the next thing in any case. 

but.. after a few days i quickly fell under the impression this man was a bit screwy and that i wanted nothing to do with him any longer. so stayed a few more for whatever novelty could possibly be left in the thing.. and then i walked away, without a word further.

im fairly certain, 90%, it was on this trip that i nabbed my first deep well container — ever — north out of roseville. immediately i was of the notion that this was the rare sunday special to seattle out of oaklands desert yard, it being sunday and the entire thing being made up of these blue APL cans which id never seen before either. and i think this was before i ever learned of the lcbr to pdx being rerouted north through sacramento instead, or id not been looking out for an IM at that hour of the night in the first place. luckily.

anyhow, its all 48 foot containers inside 53 foot wellcars, leaving a good chunk of space on either side of it in the bottom, where many of the cars there is only a crossbeam between you and the ground.. but in others a solid 2 1/2' x 7' of floor to lay out (or sit upright) in. completely unseen. cool beans yeah? 

i get off in portland anyways, to refill, then take an empty gondola on the good old trash train, off champ siding, for the last leg to seattle.

this next thing is a landscaping position up in the san juan islands. so getting off in georgetown, i take the first bus down to the airport where theres this special (and unnecessarily spendy) $40 shuttle straight to the ferry terminal in anacortes. 

technically theres a way to freight all the way to anacortes, but itd be an unnecessary feat of traincore figuring all that out when the com trans there is like 6 dollars in total.

id never been to the islands before so didnt know what to expect. place turns out to be a total partier resort and has plenty of avenues for further employment opportunities around, for those looking to lay down roots. 

at the center or belly if you prefer of orcas, is eastsound. the islands only actual town. there you have the one library, the one gas station, one grocer, and the four or five bars all in the same few square blocks.. a long bay jettisoning out into the sound.. and here just a hundred feet off the shore like a naval sits a smaller island.. or whatever the dictionary would more properly term an island this small. no bigger than a house really. 

doe bay resort and retreat then, starts its interns off on a biweekly stipend of 200 loaded onto a cashcard useable only there. but after a month or so they put me on an actual payroll as an employee. 

theres only a handful of us at first, beginning in march, but many more show up later in the spring and the place gets to be quite lively. there are cabins and designated camping spots reserved for employees on the premises, all up the hill way back into the woods where theres a smattering of benches.. restrooms.. outdoor showers.. and one yet unfinished outdoor kitchen underway. 

a bonfire most every night with a quarter of the staff around it, winding down after work before trickling off to bed.

and at the base of it all though, the amenities there are hot tubs, sauna.. a licensed masseuse..  veggie garden.. cafe overlooking the bay, with a little soundstage in it for live music on thursdays.. finally, a real change of pace for me. everyone here so laid back it took me some time getting used to.

they put me as landscape lead and then after some weeks on dishwashing at the cafe on weekends. that, then spa maintenance once a week and im all booked. 7days a week. 

pretty soon im showing up to work so hungover im still drunk from the previous night, every few days. giving off definite candle at both ends vibes for sure. it was funny at first but then some people started showing some signs of concern after awhile. there goes old rob again back to his camp, with his two growler sized beers. how does he do it.. myself, i didnt know some days.

all the positive signals from the womenfolk but i never make any moves, mostly out of sheer laziness. but also on many occasions when id have liked to, because i was aware of my being too far passed a harmless buzz to really pull it off with any surety. in these environs with its multifaceted complexities of.. social credit, in a word. 

i was rapidly budding into the resorts own resident alcoholic, and for that i had a very fine balancing act to maneuver through if i was going to make out alright on an island this tight-knit, and i knew it.

meanwhile were all going out to the lower to play pool and carouse around on weekends. long drunken walks with coworkers… and somewhere in the midst of all this i was beginning to feel somewhat strange. at times a little more than somewhat, but in an even profound and spiritual sort of way.. about things in general.. and it could well be that a sort of prolonged burn-out which was accruing slowly over a period of work related, mostly physical, stress was partly to blame.. but it felt almost like i was losing my mind some days — except in a vaguely pleasant way. it seemed that all the faces and places and occasions of the recent past and over that previous winter most particularly (as it had been fairly difficult and rife with ever present dangers throughout), were replaying through my mind still fresh as yesterday. this sort of.. kalaedescopic..  effervescence of memories that i could sit down with a beer between i and the window of the cabin and never grow bored or lonely — and it distracted from other things, like my peers. lost in thought, and tired. always tired.

there was one though. one girl. i was in good position for it too as it happened, since i was a staple on the maintenance side and, well, known-of. it was by now common knowledge i wasnt out for the ladies much at all. so all i really had to do, to say it, was look at her. and she goes cursing out to the smoke table like somebody just slapped her in the face. 

got her good: by surprise. but that was only one step in a dozen and i overshot things; the dream faded. life intruded before i could build it all up properly. i had to get away from the workplace and find something else. so left abruptly to alaska for a second go at salmon season. and i leave just the same way as usual, walking the whole 20 miles back to the ferry terminal without comment. one morning i just didnt have the heart to show up anymore, as positive an experience as it was while it lasted. and i really do sometimes think back and wish that i had stayed a little while longer.

Bristol bay, AK just a week later and its 16 hours a day, 7 days a week racking frozen fish. grueling work, but not so bad knowing what to expect after the first time three years earlier at the same plant. but its got a bad batch of angry laborers this time around and the season gets pretty wild. i knew by then to keep my head down so i survive it all fine, myself. but over the final week there people are getting damn near murdered.

a couple days before we all get our paychecks and flown back down to the lower fourtyeight theres a full on riot. 

i wake in the middle of the night to go take a leak and dont hear all the screaming and shouting until im just out the door pulling the earbuds out of my ears. i look to my right and in the hallway is a mass of 15-20 bodies all over oneanother and just as many more standing just beyond, some trying to deter one or another and here and there someone jumping into the mix. somebody had ripped a toilet out of a stall and thrown it through somebodys bedroom door. and i saw someone grab the fire extinguisher and try to smash the face of someone else on the ground with it, before that got ripped away by yet another party who proceeds to spray the entire parade down with it in effort to break it up. semisuccessfully. but it keeps going.. and im just standing there with the other white guys, the dude next to me with his mouth hanging open.. in raw, genuine awe.. transfixed in childlike wonder. we exchange glances for a brief second, and we are in silent agreement on something nobody ever really quite works out in words but rather senses all the same. there surely must be significant differences, from one ethnicity to the other. and you dont really feel it so much as witness the thing.

before long sparky, the lead foreman, comes bursting from the second-stairwell door into the hall with a baseball bat, yelling.. and it was just like one of those comic fight sequences in the jackie chan movies.. this little philipino man makes ten-fifteen feet and stops dead in his tracks before two behemoth black dudes standing in his way grinning.. and doubles back out the way he came, more screaming than yelling.. the two directly after him, right by me and this gorgeous philipina across from me whom id never dared talk to there and we only turn to eachother wordlessly like, did you just see that fucking shit, laughing out loud. what the fuck.

with that the whole mess kind of migrates outside and eventually the police make it out and some arrests are made.

my first summer up there id spent a whole month between herring and salmon in anchorage, waiting to get flown back for the other, may to june. mostly drunk for the duration. mustve hit just about every bar in town. west and then working my way to the east side after a time. first just recovering from herring though, initially. sore all over, down to the finger bones sore. my whole body hurt. but i eventually got around to the train yard there. id been wanting to scope that line up to fairbanks out. so starting from the bridge over the river from downtown, north onto the bikepath running between that and the tracks i work my way up. and its here that im first acquainted with alaskas mosquitoes. and as my stroll progresses out to the east throat of the yard and then backtracking over to the west and over to the north side to access the wooded area along the bluff opposite, i discover just how bad it really is. there are so many mosquitoes, setting up on this or that side for any length of time is inconceivable to me. not for an hour, not for a minute. and then, surveying what all i have to work with under these conditions i discover that i am even iller-equipped for this than i had assumed i was — my bug-net is in fact only coffin sized.. 3x3x7; cubic, and without stakes for the four corners of the thing. not at all practical. in short: anchorage proved to be straight ass for camping. and the yard itself altogether its own beast, the security is unexpectedly harsh. at some point someone spies me — from close to a mile away spies me — crossing over the mains well outside the yard itself, to go have a merry shit in the woods. thats to say, i didnt make a ride to fairbanks.. you see, i was nearly arrested by the rail police instead, just barely talking my way out of it. carefully emphasizing that i was homeless and only sitting in the bushes next to the railroad tracks with all my hiking gear because all the other spots to sleep have been claimed, sir. a shame too, my ride left just some minutes after corporal dicksuck did and it was really crawlin at a friendly pace. 

so i give up on fairbanks and kinda just resign myself to the hostel for the rest of the month. the hostel and all the bars. i found a nice pool hall too, a real big one with like twenty tables and five of that other thing. billiards or whatever. would daydrink away there, playing myself mostly. sometimes my roomie would come along though. also a drinker, and also waiting on hr to bring him out for salmon processing, only further south down the panhandle. back at the hostel motherfucker was facetiming his wife and kid every day in the bunk below mine crying like a whiny bitch. its alright though, some people just never been long away from home. otherwise a pretty solid guy. but for that was nice to get him out and about at times, so at least i didnt have to hear it. 

so besides all the wandering around town either drunk or hungover out of my mind im kind of just doing a lot of small talk with randoms. surprisingly never getting into any confrontations for as strung out as i was waiting for salmon to pick up. but there was this once i almost got my ass beat by this samoan dude. some club up towards downtown. was standing around with my drink just enjoying the music, watching people dancing. but was staring too long at all the ass in between i guess because these three samoans appear before me and guy gets real in my face to say that the chick im looking at is his fiance and hes not playing at all, just staring into my soul. i surprise myself with how tactfully i reach out my hand at the last moment in way of deference and congratulate him on his betrothel. he accepts that and fucks off thank god. but i did no more floor gazing after that, needless to say.

overall anchorage was not unlike most any other city, although relatively small for a fullfledged metropolitan, whole swathes of wooded/undeveloped sections here and there which isnt typical fare for its size, gave it its own feel a little i guess.. but im mostly just reminded of bellingham when i think of anchorage, or viceversa possibly.. both in terms of layout and atmosphere. the sea to the wet end and mountains on the east. although surprisingly, for anchorage, where the sun is never entirely set until 2am, there was not much of a nightlife. or so it seemed that way wheresoever id gone drinking in the evenings; everywhere closed right around ten or eleven or sometimes even earlier. step out of the bar and it aint even fucking dark yet. and i found this somewhat depressing. really the only thing i have against anchorage i think.. that and the mosquitoes, obviously. 

anyway, salmon that year the going was pretty cool and people at the plant were easy going. we got along swimmingly. but this summer was about opposite that. and in between days, when there were no loads coming in id be walking the 5-10 miles down the beach and to the first market in naknek for beer. following grizzly tracks in the sand all the way back. alone, considering myself an awful lucky cunt never catching up with the bear, each trip i made. (3 maybe, im not totally nuts) there were ofc others making the same hike, but together in groups. they were smarter, you see.

all up and down fishing boats near and far, some laying down nets and others smaller and closer anchoring trot lines to shore. little cabins and storage sheds here and there.. a few houses. their families out and about on bikes or atvs or in trucks.. imagine owning beach property right on bristol bay. raking in fish every summer with your wife and kid. selling that by the truckload in town or to nearby plants like pederson point by the pound. blowing the odd moose or grizzly away with your hunting rifle..

none of them looked terribly rich, in fact most of them looked to be scraping by relatively humbly — and this i found peculiar. a sort of striking contrast there.. these people made it look easy, like you could just show up one day with a trailer full of lumber and stake out a plot right there on the water, live the dream out there in the alaskan wilderness. fishing boat and all. that was i think what made bristol bay so oddly picturesque to me.. made the imagination wander..

drawing up images straight out of hemmingways old man or islands in the stream.. these hovels perched humbly against the great northern sea, with the salt of the earth trickling in and out of them. campfires.. laughing, cooking. living.

re 2024

..i visit my mother for a couple months first. had not seen her in a couple years i think. then hitch on to whitefish where it starts snowing like mad after a few days — a few inches is fine but after that hoofing it gets to be a bit much.. and 8" is just unacceptable. so continuing on i stop through sandpoint, where id side out in previous years between the lake and golf course, but never stepped off. nice little place, a lot like whitefish i suppose.. but the mosquitoes are just miserable in the summer there, and the coal mostly never sides. ebds are more common, and UP up to the border i think also. 

next, an international stack sides out one afternoon and i throw onto that, 100$ richer. getting out again in hauser to switch to a night train for the spokey bull.. but looking at maps out there it dawns on me that couer d'alene is just 10 miles down the road, and its even got a labor ready.. id been thinking about couer d'alene ever since we had a dude from there come out to intern back up in the cascades a minute once. gave me a nice image of a relatively relaxed, homelessness free.. traditional-minded environment — and it happened to be just about that exactly, to my great surprise. little bit like bend but roomier, more expanded. 

labor ready has zero work unfortunately but somebody gives me a hundred bucks, and then somebody else does when i try to hitch to ellensburg on the 90, thinking i might wind up in spokane drinking half of it if i went back to the yard.. they tell me its for a bus ticket and so when they drop me off at the bank the banks closed because its sunday. so i wait for monday, and then monday turns out to be mlk day so am forced to wait for tuesday and by the time tuesdays rolled around ive spent a third of it already and its now a waffle between a bus ticket and just walking my rich white ass back to the yard afterall with an extra 60$ in my pocket — provided i make it passed the bull. i opt for the ladder, like i knew all along that i would.

so its a cheap bus over to post falls again and a 6 mile trek up the country road to hauser yd. i bed down there until next day when an imds pulls in along the main around sundown. the perfect hour. just barely late enough in the evening to work. no piggybacks though so i situate myself as up under the grate as humanly possible, to be on the safe side and hope the rail cop is t as vigilant after hours..

no cop i could see, squinting up through the dark as we crept up through spokane yd to the overpasses and signals.. but it did seem that the oncoming train, stopped alongside for signal indication on track two may have been doing a rollby check while they waited bc we slowed to a stop just seconds after my car passed them. i get off immediately and start walking ahead, between each train to find another rideable. mine doubles back 20 or so and im certain that it was to bring my car back.. but theres no headlights nor flashlight that i can see when i go to peek back, once im on a different car. 

still.. i get off again after some minutes, paranoia getting the best of me. thinking the bull could feasibly come rolling along the high banks alongside with a spotlight and id have nowhere to run fast — the far side of the mains being too steep and bare to scale with my things on me. 

but.. when my train airs back up and departs as im walking away, now too far to change my mind again, its clear then that idve been fine if id stayed on. no lights came scanning.

following morning i wend my way out to the outlet mall to the east, my ace in the hole every time i have to get off in spokane. id caught a canadian unit grain that comes down from eastport, set out overnight out here the last time id been forced off. (one does not get off in spokane of their own free will). unsure whether itd be the same again — you never know with the rails these days. thankfully though, it was the same. woke to a horn approaching through the early morning and i hustle down to the tracks, knowing that if the departure time on this one would be anything like the last it was bound to be leaving off again soon. regardless, nature calls and i find a bush first to squat down by.. and then, staring blankly down the line i spot a dpu. pulling up my pants i start jogging on again.. the grainers on this thing arent quite the same and all the rideables have big circular holes cut in either side of the porch making for an uncomfortable ride, and ive hardly a choice but to include the engine unit in my list of options.

i make it back to the mid-train finally, without problem, and its locked of course. and theres a limber yard right up alongside the tracks on the starboard, the side i need to get to the window.. BUT, broad daylight be damned, it happens to be a SUNDAY and I thank my lucky stars and climb in. a convenient thing too because i was getting real low on water and theres no water anywhere around but the first gas station two miles off, in hinkle.

so its through the canyons and down the columbia, as always, every other year at least.. westward into the grapefruit sun, capsizing onto those flaxen high plains hilltops. ocean beaches just one train beyond it.

in pdx i wait patiently for champ siding before getting out. because fuck wilkes. sleeping a good 10 hours by the tracks there before stepping off to the bus to kirby around noon. getting there, i grab a few beers from the pantry and sit down on the drag outside a coffee shop, pulling out the guitar.

some dude that looks just like john strolls by and, dropping a fiver in my case asks if im accepting donations, with a big grin on his face. i jump up immediately to give him a big hug and slap him on the back asking how hes been.. it was a very strange exchange. guy assumes he knows me from somewhere and says hes no longer working for the 'nonprofit'.. i go 'huhh??'. guy introduces himself as RJ, says keep buskin and then he was off again. 

im in eugene the next morning and head directly to the stop to florence, downtown. where i chill a week or so, and doing just what im sure you can guess by now. one other ex-rider who happens to be posted up in the same spot alex's veteran friend had been the previous year is hanging out at the freddies, where we drink an evening away exchanging stories.

after i get laundry finished with i take the bus north to yachats and then newport. in yachats i go into a bar for the first time in a while, feeling blessed with the 100 some nice lady had given me earlier that day in florence. 

in this bar i learn that my friend john carcia had passed away the previous year, not long after id received an email from him saying he had built a tiny house there with some other people that had done the same. someone had found him and his dog laying dead in there and suggested carbon monoxide. 

in newport i wake up behind a church and theres this old dude that works as a maintenance guy or something there that lives in the shed next to me. says he had been a whole lot of traveling around like myself till one day he stopped by this same church and theyd offered him work. still there today, he still goes out to play guitar on the street a few times a week. invited me back later to maybe jam a little but i wasnt recovered enough yet to feel much like doing anything. and later when i was i found myself headed down to the old irish bar at the beach. the mood had come finally.

its funny though, all this way back for the beach, i finally make it there and i dont even so much as glance that way, just a block further yonder. i couldve at least taken my boots off and set my feet in the sand to say 'aye.. man was here'.. 'ayyyye, i did journey from montana-ways.. i came, i saw, and it was good..' 

nope. just set down in a corner, waterfront behind me, cracked a beer and started playing. somebody even gave me some fives this time.

2024

on my way back from bend to eugene for a doctors appointment i meet john carcia through this website for travelers. travelers on the anarchist / punk spectrum of things. he had recently signed up and had been looking to get into the freight scene. i open the page after a few weeks absence and find a message inviting me over to eugene and i tell him im there tomorra anyways whatsup. lucky timing, as it turned out — huge ice storm hits the same week. guy houses me up at the place hes staying with a handful of youngsters.. im pleasantly surprised to find a band of of them essentially squatting an old two story in the middle of the suburbs.

I spend two-three months here and john and i and one josh sometimes jamming in the garage. we almost feel like a potential band, the three of us, for just a little while there. and john and i start making excursions into town together every week or so with our instruments, to see if we could make any money (himself being every bit as broke as i was). 

when the ice storm hits we have 3-4 days straight of freezing rain and theres a few inches of solid ice left over everything. theres trees everywhere toppling over from the sheer weight of it all, and i even see a man ice skating through the street, just cruising along. 

meanwhile im making trips from foodbank to foodbank and carrying loads of beer cans out across the river from cal anderson to fred meyer or walmart for 10 - 20 dollarsworth of deposit. drinking profusely and boosting most of it from every grocer in town — except for walmart and winco.. those didnt look so easy. 

i go for a few job interviews without any luck, except for the one i land and then drunkenly piss the employer off via text before i ever even start.. but labor ready got me a few days work, at the last minute, unloading drywall. probably the most physically demanding job ive had in years.. basically just lifting all day every day, which isnt all bad if you look at it differently.. like maybe this means you dont need a gym membership. all in perspective.

john and i had been talking freight a lot but not nearly enough to leave me with the impression he was going to get off the fence about whatever direction, in his mind, he was ultimately going to be taking with the approaching spring. so was surprised when he said finally that he was ready to leave the house and make the leap to freight. mainly, i figured the house — his living situation in general — was beginning to wear on him and he just needed a break. little fresh air.

so let the wind lead the way. after taxes come in i put together a little money to throw at matt in ways of rent / compensation.. buy a new jacket and new pack.. and with beer money enough remaining to get me at least a week on. so.. we head out to the train yard after my last day with the drywall place, at times of our own convenience respectively, meeting up at maxwell to wait on a southbound.

for whatever reason the z that comes that night has zero rides. or at least any of the normal fare.. the only wells available are these fucked up little beveled ones where half the floor dips down. uncomfortable as hell. mother fucker.. and that was poor old johns first and only ride.

Kfalls doesnt have a whole lot going on downtown.. gotta hit it on a saturday early.. so we never really pull out the instruments there. just sort of wander over to fred meyers and circle back again, to the outlet at the sbd spot, next day. 

not surprisingly johns back on the fence about it that morning, saying maybe rain (his def cattle dog) isnt freight riding material afterall.. and that hed head on over to the coast instead. he really seemed to be fond of yachats for whatever reason. i only recognized the name of the town bc i had gone to job corps there way back in 2013. anyway, he peaces out to the amtrak station — i later learn that he had gone hitching it instead, and a damn time of it too. (not a fun stretch of interstate).

so he leaves, then i leave to the store to grab a fresh case of beer.. and just as soon as im walking back my imds pulls in and i start running. five minutes later im hauling ass out of town with my first cold beer and im watching the bastard sun climb up out of the morning mist. im certain that if that train had been just 20 minutes earlier john wouldve been on that train with me and he wouldve found a better way.

jumped off in old roseville for 24hrs to fly a sign up at the bel air. made a 100 and split on the next eastbound. i stay with this train clear to wyoming, but we did work in salt lake for some hours.. another block is added and we leave off again. making almost 48 hours altogether up to the overland and eastward by green river. most of the gms seem to stop over here in rock springs, the town over, way the hell on the other side of an impassable marsh land; so was glad to be stepping off in green river proper this time, at the old riverbridge. took the most satisfying shit ever in my life i did take. dead quiet and the headlights of the interstate against the canyon on the far side.

never much to be done here unless youve dirty laundery ig.. but to soak up the peace and quiet, relax and re-discover all the power outlets around bc you always forget just where they're hiding here. two other riders are at the mavericks there and we chill for awhile, share stories. one mutual acquaintance. and the stars come freckling out over the fading light. 

left a few hours later and was in cheyenne early next morning. 

in cheyenne i find a little bit of yardwork after flying at either walmarts, and spend a few weeks just sort of wandering around town there, drinking. a wild windstorm appears, clocking just a touch under 100 mph.. some category l hurricane shit. i about blow right over the side of the overpass. three blocks was a real endeavor that day, and they had canceled most of the city busses.. so for a day or so im sat in a corner against the wall.. just like usual except this time its for cover from flying shrapnel and debris..

when i decide to head out ive decided to hitch it to casper first, bc the north/south traffic goes right by the military base there and wasnt entirely clear on where to spot it nor willing to spend another week doing so i head toward the onramp up near the shopping centers. i meet a couple of scruffy rubber tramps headed the same way that were flying at the walmart there. dont remember their names but we made bank at the centers in casper once we made it in. about 300 in a couple hours.. split it up and they skidaddled north again. on the way up from cheyenne it looked almost like kansas, just a little hill here and there and a whole lot of grass/brush — then, out of nowhere, mountains.

tried my hand at the same spot alone a few days later.. made a little more beer pitch and scored a days work in some young couples front yard. didnt run into any other travelers for my time in casper. just wandered around, restocking on beer here and there and back again, practicing guitar. im sure there must be a good spot to busk somewhere around casper but i never found one. 

i had originally assumed the daily z-seall went up this line but after looking over the cc and the maps realized that they moustly route around through billings and down via wendover in the east. cheyenne — casper — greybull — laurel is evidently all junk gms, and relatively sparse. so had to guess which string in the little yard here was leaving first, out of each respective yard. and once in laurel the mains of the lowline come through and theres less guessing there.

wind river canyon had been on the bucket list for a long time. for the duration actually, since picking up an issue of aaron dactyls 'railroad semantics', where he recounts his and one 'T-BOX's trip through there.. jumping off at a siding along the river where, waiting some days for another to side out, they find some old ass hobo tags carved into the rock wall nearby. 

a gorgeous ride, and my manifest departed casper at the perfect time, so that i was rolling through it right around late morning. even the weather was immaculate and i caught plenty of pictures of the canyon for posterity.

greybull just an hour north of that, and its as small and low key as any. i find a shoestring tag from like 94 or something. cant find the photo of it id had now. 

i wait a few days. almost lose my shit somewhere in the dark of the yard im so drunk, at one point. had fallen asleep on a lumber rack in the middle of an IDing mission like a dumbass and completely forgot, on waking, which track id grounded my gear next to. 

between greybull and laurel my gm stops 10 miles out of lovell for something like 2 days. cant go anywhere ofc bc you dont know just when youll air back up and go, it could be any minute. but luckily, when i ran out of water, i found some up in the headend. then an empty box some 30 back from there before a big rain came. theres someone coughing in the box just ahead of mine, opened on the far side.. and next morning decided there was two up there cause for a brief time heard something like lovemaking.

laurels chill. but forget the travel center on the east side though. terrible beer selection and no foodies. just stay southside by the grocers, save yourself the time; there aint shit out there up the road. another couple weeks.. i do laundery, some folks give me money, i drink a bunch.. just drinking.. and ever so often i get a hair up my ass and look at my guitar. something haunts me and i play it out, sometimes successfully othertimes not so well. its a funny sort of.. process, this matter with the guitar.. am i drinking to play or is it the other way around.

i grab some loaded coal out of laurel and get off in helena to rinse and repeat there. some auto detailer gives me a few hours work in his shop, and theres a few bucks on the side made flying walmart. again, no fellow travelers anywhere i can see.. just more wandering around town, although i dont go too far here, the whole place is at a tilt and everytime i have to walk back uphill for more beer i swear its the last. 

on the way back to the yard there i dumpster a couple of whole ass large pizzas from dominos. score. and when i get there, another coal train waiting on the main for me, theres a shower of greens and pinks dancing around in the sky to the north and i watch this over a pizza and long after we air up and leave into the night. tall shafts of grey pulsating electrically directly overhead all through the mountains and stars. aurora borealis.

missoula

id fairly set my mind some years prior, after buying the silvertone there, that id go back to missoula to stay and so when i arrived it felt like a real accomplishment. i may not have the glock id planned to have for it anymore but ive got everything i need to make it anyhow. 

but all i do is play. play in the street, play in the dark and under the bridge and in the alleyways play.

labor ready gives me a few things but thats my only cash flow. i meet one other traveler there the entire summer and i dont know where or how i mustve missed the rest because missoula is definitely a point of interest along the hi/low line every summer.

teague and i were sent out to the same detailing job by labor ready. this big boat and rv place up reserve ave. id seen him and his dogs walking that way, out the window of the bus there. thinking oh look theres one… shortly before the shift starts sure enough. guy shows up and we acquaint ourselves. sort of a rare thing to see a fellow traveler working through labor ready, we agree… and to be assigned the same shift! 

guys camping out on an island on the river with old unused tracks that run out to it. same day his dog shits, for what was i guess the umpteenth time, all over the place and they tell him to leave halfway through the day. but we chill at some point the following week — guys hitching the main drag south, bc they wont let his dogs aboard the bus.. i had just gotten off my temp shift at walmart and was sitting in the grass out by the street..  just looked up and there he was again, with his thumb out.

wasnt much longer before i left. the aim had been to find work and stay there, in missoula.. but as time passed, all i did was play.. in the street, in the dark, under the bridge and in the alleyways play, missoula. and when the summer had gone i was gone with it.. with cheery notions about the warm friendly beaches, missoula.