after ashland then
Im always circling back to bend I guess. just one of those places rife with qualities.. got to have a good smoky mezcal now and then. got to. like the smell of the ponderosas and sage, that distinct free spirited college atmosphere and the varying landscape cut along the cool deschutes.. that, all together, help to break up the monotony of the rest. others less distinct. a nice contrast, most years, for a little while. I guess.
So after a long heat wave on the i5 i swing out onto BNSF trackage for the first time in six years, for a little change of scenery after ashland. spending the last weeks of summer, clear through fall, there.
met this local dude my age that gave me a few weeks work, flying a sign at the offramp by freddies. picked me up on the spot and i went straight to it, shoveling for something like 20/h. he and his wife and kids were moving house and fixing to put a patio in back of it before renting it out. all kinds of shoveling.. was basically like their negro by the time we were through. a big fat score, for me.
mostly just drank all that money away though. enough to fuel me through a great deal of evening busking / guitar practice anyhow. But not without a spanking new pair of insulated bibs and renewed cell service on the side. yee.
briefly jumping over to eugene to take care of some chlamydia i picked up earlier that summer, a court date in k falls, and then back again by october for more busking.
the night i hopped back towards eugene this native gentleman with a beautiful green yamaha and a fifth of vodka gives me a fresh pickup for my acoustic, and offers to show me the breezeway across the street. sitting down he offers up the bottle. a very unique playstyle, freeform / improve rhythm but fluid as though all one song melted together like — no pauses. Says he had popped some acid earlier and i notice then that hes sweating profusely, long black locks running down past his face meditatively over the guitar. chromatic hammerons and percussive slides.. i could hardly keep pace and quickly resigned my own guitar just to watch quietly.
next morning i wake in the middle of the modoc forest barreling through norcal, realizing id long overslept my stop in k falls. extremely hungover and not a beer stowed. maps putting me just a couple hours north of keddie.
we stop on a single main, still some 10-20 miles up from it, for a long time. i crack open a tea which is always a mistake — withdrawals + caffeine.. always severe anxiety. sometimes to the point of mild paranoid episodes. anyway i get nervous because the next stop south after keddie would be stockton.. and what with all the randomized crew change points in certain places i couldnt be sure whether it was that or something else. so i decide to risk the hitch and hoof it up to the head end to have a look. see if theres a crew, signal, anything. the crews there, but no bnsf vans/trucks and no signal posts anywhere either direction. so i walked earnestly up to the conductors window which was open and said afternoon. theyd been phoned by dispatch, over the radio, i guess. about some maintenance of way up ahead.. i said thank god and biddem gooday, booking it back to my grainer. just minutes after i make it back on we air up and are rolling south again.
which is when the very worst of my caffeine/hangover induced anxiety starts coming on pretty hard. i start having second thoughts about the conductors response. like, what if he was just pulling my leg? what if they were the new crew for that consist, and we really were about to blow through keddie? and, in that moment, i felt like if i wound up in keddie with no more money for beer and a bad hangover i was in for a rough time. it was the first time ive ever had to talk myself out of jumping off on the fly.. gripping onto the crossbeams of the V like my sanity depended on it.. i really felt quite out of my mind. looking back its of course fairly comical.
anyway the train did crew change in keddie, and i did get to sleep off the rest of my withdrawals that day. keddie feels as though no one has been there for hundreds of years, even though there are signs of traffic all over and the buzzing of timbermen in the hillsides all morning long. still feels as though you are in the middle of nowhere.. and yet there are busses through and around the area, and the one i took down to quincy (bc keddies not but a bridge and some old camping / resort on the river) was free i think. make a few bucks there by the albertsons for a couple days, enough for tobacco and some more beer, then head back. across from the park on the river theres a gravel road leading up to the tracks.. and i take it.
at some point i get thrown out of a bar there. the astro lounge, this little hidy tidy college kid club with the lights and electronic music. id been busking across the street the day after xmas when somebody dropped me a hundred dollar bill. so went directly in for a couple of double shots.
for the second id yelled too loud for my order when asked to speak up, over the noise, and quickly found myself being dragged away from the bar — and an untouched and very expensive bourbon. i catch a black eye from one of the bouncers and give them a bloody nose in return, for which the cops get called and i narrowly avoid going to jail smooth talking them. in oregon fighting is actually illegal. which explains a lot, actually..
anyways, i later realize id left my jacket there — or somewhere.. i had kind of blacked out.. coming to sitting on my pack with a beer in an alleyway staring into space with only a longsleeve on. setting a precedent for the following few days shenanigans.
figuring the jacket gone for good i decided walmart.. and ive got to lift it bc all ive got left is 60, and although the insulated bibs help its still cold as fuck.
I run across this couple of riders flying at freddies. Nice girl Clyde and i forget her mans name but also rad.. little pit puppy between them. Good to see eome real mccoys around Bend.. these two were rough and weathered.. all the signs and symptoms of having been on the rails for the long haul — years.
we put some rounds back when theyre done flying, myself ive still got a wad left after the hundred i broke the other night.. soon dudebro goes in to the restroom and doesnt come out. so his lady gets worried and runs in for a look when the ambulance shows up.
the man had gone and smoked some fent in there and wound up collapsing at the entrance on the way out.. so i help his lady carry their things over to a chill spot for the night to wait for him to get out of the hospital.
released the next day dude doesnt have his jacket now either bc theyd cut the thing clean away at the ER. so we both go hit the homeless / vet services clothing closet for some extra layers. Later, the same night after hitting walmart also for a nice dickies crew jacket i find a sick 'the shining' shirt in a pile on the ground in the wooded area we sack out at. which was exactly the last piece of gear missing — a hood.
downtown again to drink some more and celebrate new years next evening we head to the family kitchen for a nice dinner.. i pass out early though, never making it there, and wake up to the lady having brought me a whole ass 'to go' bag. awesomeness, madam.
i pass out again briefly then wake up to find them gone. assuming they went back trackside i head that way myself.
but when i see a train sitting there i get on anyways - without a word sideways.. just felt like getting, while i was still feeling alive.