Friday, July 30, 2010

First Train Ride

My horoscope before leaving Milwaukee said:
"An unexpected opportunity to take a short trip could present itself today. Hop on that boat or train and see where it goes. If you have no reason to travel, make one up. You don't need one anyway. The point is that its time to get away from your current surroundings and explore other ways of living..."

It felt like a pretty appropriate horoscope considering that I was about to get on my first train for a short trip to Minneapolis. It was amazing. We cooked a good dinner beforehand and went to the hop out spot in the back of our friends truck. I sat in the back listening to Elizabeth Cotten and attempting to play what she was singing on Joe's guitar. When we got there, the jungle was so full of mosquitoes. I've never been more bitten in my life. When the train came, we split up and got on two 53 porches and I rode with Joe.

It was amazing! The first time we sided we were inundated with mosquitoes again and since it was night I couldn't see all that much but it was an incredibly liberating feeling. I loved the secretness and the solitude of a train at night. It was really cold and Joe didn't have a sleeping bag with him so there ended up being a fun game of twister trying to stay warm but when the sun started coming up it never felt better. We crossed the Mississippi and hid going under the trestle and then turned around to check it out, I've never been over the Mississippi not flying before.

We hopped off in St. Paul. Joe was giving me all the techniques to get off a moving train so we didn't have to go into the yard and then we just ended up stopping anyway. We emerged on a highway and started hitching. I thought with 4 people (and 2 of them being boys) and 2 dogs that we would never get a ride or we would at least have to split up but a nice graf kid came along and took us to Seward Cafe in Minneapolis.

I was so out of it from not sleeping much and a little disoriented but the Seward seemed like a magical place. It had a backyard and a garden and its collectively run. We ordered delicious food but I wasn't able to eat very much of it, I just wanted coffee. We stayed there for a long time just sort of collecting ourselves. Stories told revealed mutual friends and everyone told stories about past adventures but it all felt very dreamlike.

We walked from Seward's to Joe's friend Natalie's house. I know now that the walk wasn't that far but it seemed to take forever and when we finally got there I flopped down on the couch in the cool basement and didn't move again for a long time. I'll have some pictures to post eventually.

No comments:

Post a Comment