..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.