16 Hours to Somewhere

So I’m sitting here at a McDonalds, the same spot I was sitting on the 2nd day of my journey. Waiting for a girl that’s gonna meet me here. An Irish girl. From Ireland. She’s done some travelling with me before, as I’ve briefly mentioned in previous stories.

I can’t help but wonder exactly whats brought me back to this particular location. I suppose a sense of comfort with the knowledge of the area. I know where I can sleep safely. I know the highway comes and goes this way. I know the beach is nice, and its the same place I saw the beach for the first time.

I’ve missed a few days(weeks) of writing. I’ll try to catch things up a bit.

We were in LA, right? That was nice and all. Definitely a place I’ll never return to, though. I’m just really not a fan of big cities. Which is exactly why the next place I wind up is even more silly than the last. Its not just a big city, its in the fucking desert. A series of cities and desert, actually.

San Bernadino for 3 days was all fine and dandy. It was nice and cool. After days of waiting and figuring and even missing a train or 3, I woke up to find, lo and behold, a train is sitting in front of us. A container train, to be exact. With a nice bucket to sit in. We’ll be riding suicide, but that doesn’t really bother me because at this point I’m in a pretty deep “Anywhere but here” funky mood. So I wake up my Irish companions and we jump on quickly and loudly.

I tell them to stay down, there could be a tower in the yard and someone might see us.

“The course of events that would follow the ‘Us being spotted’ possibility would not be so pleasant” I warned.

Luck was again on our side. For some weird reason we didn’t get spotted. However, this was but only the first of many problems that we would encounter.

Okay, so the train is heading south. Southbound woo. Hopefully we break off Eastward and then we’ll be going towards Las Vegas! Woo!

Oh yeah I forgot to mention how the Irish wanted to go to Vegas. First LA, then Vegas. These guys are gonna kill me, I haaaate big cities. But I couldn’t say no, I have family in Vegas and I wanted to see them. So with a shrug I agreed to take them via freight.

Anyways, so we’re on a train. Going south. Oh man here comes the East turn, and we’re going pretty slow so we’ll probably turn. Hmm I hope we switch tracks soon. Alright. Here it comes. Should be here any minute now. Any minute at all.

Aaaand there it goes. Right on past us. Okay, okay, that’s alright. Lemme check my map.

…

…

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Well guys, it looks like we’re either going to Pheonix, Arizona…

…

orrrr MEXICO!!! Woo Mexico.

I had feigned a lot of excitement about Mexico but my trousers were slightly browned due to the horror stories that I’ve heard. Police that rob tourists blind, the cartels, the feared chupacabra, all things I never want to encounter in my life.

But if we’re gonna survive this trip we need some moral! So WOOO MEXICO.

At this point I can only really get a general idea of where we are and where we are going, but as I’m figuring this out the third (or fourth?) problem came to realization.

We’re going to be travelling through the Mojave desert for a long time. And at some point we lost a gallon of water somewhere. That loss left us with about….

One Fourth of One Gallon of Water.

3 people. Now alone I would usually carry at least one gallon plus my 1.5 liter camelpak.

These people are accustomed to 60 degree temperatures, so this heat was gonna require more than average water.

We have almost no water.

Shit.

I don’t bring up this point because again, moral is important to me. I just hope and pray that at some point we stop next to a faucet or something. After about 45 minutes of flying down the tracks we come up to and miraculously stop at something thats almost as nice as a faucet.

An orange grove.

Necessity dictated that the stealing of a few small fruits in order to maintain my survival was a completely rational move. An ethical, delicious, and somewhat sticky move. We had breakfast.

After we had our fill and were resting comfortably in the shade on the train we began to move again. Just in time. It seemed a bit odd, more than just mere luck, that we would be driven to breakfast.

Trains trains and more trains. The train kept on moving. Then would stop. Then would continue on. Rinse and repeat. The heat kept on getting heatier. The sun got sunnier. And the water became less water due to us drinking it. It was almost gone, and I shared my concerns about the water to my companions. We didn’t know what to do. We had the oranges and a couple more swigs of water. Then, who knows?

Tell ya what, I think our train was bugged or something. Maybe a camera! We had a need: water. The train began to slow down in a city. I couldn’t tell you what city it was. Southern California somewhere and rather. But for some reason the train pulled up and decided to stop a short walk from a gas station.

I spotted it before it even came to a complete stop. I was hoping it would stop. Praying it would stop. Sacrificing small animals and doing a specific native american “stopfreighttrainstop” dance involving a noisy stick and a musical number. I was about to do a human sacrifice just before it finally came to a stop.

(Disclaimer: I’m part Aztec or something so this is normal in our culture. Don’t judge)

Anyways, it stopped. Maxwell and I jumped off and sprinted towards the gas station. It was a cheap, run down, almost completely empty gas station with a guy who was on the phone and shot a weird glare at us the second we entered the store.

We ran to the refrigerators, where there was about 4 one-gallon water jugs. that was it. The fridge was damn near empty. It had like 2 Arizona teas, a couple weird food items with questionable dates, and 4 one-gallon jugs of water.

Shrug.

Maxwell grabs 2, I grab one, then grab a second “just in case.”

We decide to pay separately for each 2. Maxwell gets to the counter, where the cashier is talking idly away on the phone. He just kinda puts us on hold while he’s talking away, laughing on the phone to whomever in whatever language. I kept looking out the window at our train, sitting there, with a feeling in my gut like we don’t got long. Finally the guy gets off the phone and starts the transaction.

Maxwell tries to pay, but his card is declined. Shit. So I run up and throw mine on and tell him not to worry, I got this.

9 fucking dollars. I tried to deduct how much each one was individually and how much I was being ripped off. 9 divided by 4, so what is that, 2.25 each? I guess thats not too bad. I open up my wallet and a dead moth falls out.

Just kidding, I had done a bit of busking in the streets of San Bernny, and I managed to make enough to fund myself the last couple days. I had 10 dollars left. Just enough. Just barely enough.

Okay, fine, take all my money. Give me my life-blood. Yes. Oh god yes. Delicious cold water.

We run back to the train, hop on, and duck away in the shade thats slowly creeping away as the sun is getting higher in the sky.

The train continues on shortly after our return. We go steadily south, sometime East, and pass through a couple of really nice areas. One was a beach near a salt-water lake somewhere in Southern Cali. A large stretch of desert kept the attention of my Irish friends, as the green hills of Ireland don’t offer much of the beige desert landscapes. The scenery was nice, but the heat was deadly. Our current train was in the sun but the one behind it wasn’t, so I got the bright idea to jump from our train to the rear one during high speeds. Honestly sometimes I don’t know how Darwinism hasn’t overtaken me, but I was relaxing in some nice shade. The Irish followed in suit.

Lucy wound up getting heat exhaustion, which was cured with a water-soaked T-Shirt around the neck. Thank god for the discovery channel. The train kept on going. And going. And going. I wasn’t sure where we were gonna wind up, but then we pulled into a city where the signs were spanish and the border patrol was common. Man, we really are going to Mexico.

Yuma. Don’t know much about it. Stay down, out of view. Stay in the shade. Eat an orange. Drink some water. After a little while, I believe it was a crew change due to the length we’d been riding, the train kept a moving. South.

It was starting to get pretty late in the day. I began to get visibly worried about being in Mexico. I don’t want to go to Mexico. I have a good cry and come to terms with my fate when I notice the train is now running from the sun. We’re going East. Lets not get our hopes up too soon, it might turn again soon.

And it did. South again. Damn.

Then again, back Eastward. And this time it stayed East.

By this time the sun was starting to go down. We caught a beautiful sunset, then caught a bit of sleep. I woke up once when it appeared as though we were going to be entering Phoenix soon, and we got our gear together in case we needed to jump off before a yard. But the chance never came. The train passed right by Phoenix. Maybe it wasn’t Phoenix, maybe it was some other city. Right?

Sleep came. The sun drains you and when it goes down you can finally relax and enjoy the nice desert nights.

I woke up as the train was pulling into a pretty nice sized city. Phoenix maybe? So I said lets jump. There’s a Denny’s up the way, its pretty late but it cant be that late. So we hop off and walk down a ways to the Denny’s. Yes! Food! Water! The lady working there was super nice. When asked where we were she replied

“You’re on the corner of this street and that street.”

Okay okay, and uhh, what city might we be in?

She had this confused look and said “Tuscon?” with a somewhat upward inflection.

Tuscon. Didn’t see that coming. I guess we missed a little.

And what time is it?

Just after midnight.

Holy shit.

Okay, we eat some dinner and come to an agreement that we’re gonna hitchhike out. And that means cleaning up a bit. And that means a motel.

Luckily motels have this nice deal where after a certain hour the rooms are cut so we got a sweet price and a nice shower. Beds, air conditioning, clean clothes, it was nice.