First, I’d like to thank everyone who passed on birthday wishes today. You really challenged my policy of attempting to respond, at least in some small way to every comment.
I got into this philosophy after stumbling upon punk cabaret singer Amanda Palmer. She seems to love everyone, and she really made her whole career of taking down the velvet rope and mixing it up with her fans. If you haven’t ever heard of Amanda, I recommend her song “Ukulele Anthem” as a starting point. Here’s the link:
You’ll either love it or hate it, but I think it’s pretty creative.
I thought about writing all the lessons I’ve learned during my forty six spins around the sun, but then I remembered that would be a pretty short post. Instead, I’ll talk a little about trains.
I’d like to say I picked trains for some deep and meaningful reason like the way they serve as ships of the land empowering the efficient transportation of goods from around the world in our global and increasingly interconnected economy. How they are a perfect piece of physical evidence that we are really truly in this together.
The truth is, the gnats were back, and I was trying to get through today’s fifteen mile planned distance as quickly and with as few stops as possible. The only picture I took today even marginally worth sharing was of a train passing under me as I crossed an overpass. Of course, at my snails pace, I didn’t get to the top of the overpass to capture the locomotives of this behemoth of international commerce. You’ll get trains, and you’ll get the back end of them. Sorry.
Missed Opportunity - Near Morrison, IL
Trains, like traffic, asphalt, and recently gnats have been a constant companion during the walk. Those of you who have followed for a while already have heard about the auditory challenges associated with stealth camping in the immediate vicinity of a previously unidentified active train track, so there’s no reason to rehash that fiasco. Even when they’re not disturbing our sleep at night, trains are never far off.
There have been oil trains, cargo trains, and grain trains. I’ve seen fully loaded coal trains headed in both an easterly and westerly direction in the same day. Think about that. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would you be shipping eastern coal westward and western coal eastward on generally the same track on the same day. My suspicion is that there’s some sort of arbitrage play with that sort of apparent inefficiency for those of you with MBA’s out there in internet land.
The other day, I even saw a construction train that was creeping along the track doing maintenance on the ballast. Two great paddle wheel like bucket scoops were shovelling the ballast up from the side of the rails and depositing the gravel into a hopper where it was mixed with some tar-like substance. The tarred gravel travelled up a conveyor belt, and once at the top, a giant hopper was shaking like a pair of maracas at a salsa festival redepositing the tarred gravel right back alongside the track where it had originated. The noise was like a truck full of percussion equipment involved in a nasty accident, but louder and more enduring.
Today’s train was stacked with twenty, forty, and fifty-three foot shipping containers. Some were labeled ONE with their distinct pink paint scheme. Others were labeled China Shipping, and the ones labeled Matson will eventually visit my friends half-way across the Pacific in Hawaii.
As the double stacked fifty-three foot containers passed about eight feet under the soles of my shoes, I briefly considered making the jump to catch a ride. I had no doubt that the train would be passing near the town I’l planned to stop at the end of the day, and the train was moving at least thirty miles per hour instead of my sloth-like two point five.
It was at that moment I remembered a similar experiment when I jumped out of a boat moving at about thirty-five miles per hour to see what would happen. I skipped three or four times, the water knocked the air out of my lungs, and then I realized I was hurting all over.
The opportunity passed, and I turned to the right and trudged onward. At least I’d learned something in those forty six circuits around the sun.
