Riding the Train

Now Playing: Great Big Sea – “The Hard and The Easy”

Lordy, who are these people without cars? There is an old East Indian lady sleeping peacefully and a heavy set black lady making some kind of party favors out of ribbons. There are a few folks working on laptops and a lady reading a book. (The blurb on the back reads “For a Kick Ass Exorcist, It’s Still All About Staying Alive!” I am sure that it is all about staying alive for the rest of us too.) The guy across the isle is riffling through some papers that seem to be a presentation of some sort seems pretty intent on what he is doing.

All of them… why are they here and not in their cars? I mean, I figure the well dress Mexican fellow across the table from me with his nice computer and blackberry could afford a set of wheels, but then, maybe not.

Maybe he and the others just enjoy the ride. I mean, the mudflats of Alviso are stunningly brown and boring; Although, I don’t actually see anyone looking out the windows. It’s a nice day out and the graffiti covered freight cars on the sidetracks are, at the very least, mildly distracting.

Looking up, I see that the lady has put here ribbon project away and has covered herself up with a very large and very purple blanket. Her eyes are closed and she has a small annoyance gripping her face. She’s drifted of into an unpleasant looking nap.

We come into Fremont with a garbled announcement by someone. I think the fellow said something about the doors and “your baggage”. Fun times on the train. The platform looks really crowded and I figure that someone is going to want me to move over, but this train car seems to just swallow the crowd whole.

I’m reminded of that old elementary school math problem. We had 15 people in the car and one lady got off. A man with a yellow duffle bag got on with a lady in a green sweater. The rest went upstairs. How many people are now in my car? Ha!

I actually do like looking at the scenery along the train tracks now that we are out of Alviso. There is a sort of no-man’s-land along the tracks that belongs to kids, gang members, and the homeless. My buddies and I would have had all sorts of adventures here, in the twenty yards or so between the tracks and the real world.

The book lady and the guy across from me have fallen asleep. We’re leaving Freemont and moving into the Sunol canyon via a tunnel. It almost seems as if it’s a passage into a different world. The Silicon Valley turns into a tree filled wilderness with nothing but trees, bushes, and a creek between here and Pleasanton. Well, actually, if memory serves, there is a golf course right before the next stop, but what the hell.

When the guy across from me leaves (his ticket says “PLD” which has to be Pleasanton… don’t understand where the D comes from.) I am going to jump across to his seat. I have my back facing the direction we are moving, which is a mistake. I won’t do that tomorrow.

The man with the yellow duffle who climbed on in Freemont is now reading a rather large bible and mumbling on his cell phone. This seems odd to me, almost as if he just discovered something important in the old book that he never noticed before. I imagine him saying, “These Pharisees have me concerned” and I chuckle to myself. Pharisees are always up to stuff.

We are through Sunol now, coming up on the golf course. The hills are brown because winter is still not even close here. It looks like a tinderbox waiting to catch. The golf course is totally green; the rich folks from the hills wouldn’t accept anything else.

A guy in a leather jacket prepares to leave and people begin to shuffle stuff around. A lady, who is pretty large, two seat large in fact is watching “50 First Dates” on a portable DVD player. Funny, didn’t really notice this before, but there are a lot of large (read fat) people on the train. Not regular fat, but really big fat. At least the lady is drinking a Diet Pepsi.

I flop seats to face the right was as soon as the guy is gone. We lose more people than I can count but we gain an almost equal amount. A quick count shows a net gain of two and I get a smart looking elderly black woman across from me jotting down notes in a small pad. Wait, turns out to be a little sudoku book.

The Pleasanton to Livermore run is short, but it has that great dead zone just like Freemont.  The first of the trip has a large wall blocking off condos and I can see evidence of a clubhouse and a campfire. Cool.

I start to wish I was in my car and for a short moment, I think I don’t want to do this tomorrow. I tell myself I just spend $150 on a 10-day pass so I had better suck it up. Plus, I could also use the writing time, and I do hope to write more than this type of bullshit as I get used to the trip.

I start to get tired, which strikes me as cliché; sleeping on a train. I fight through it as I see a few signs of homeless folks outside as we sail through Liverore. We drop a few folks at the two stops and then begin the slog up the Altamont. Two more stops left, but still an hour or so to go with nothing but windmills, dry grass and my own boring thoughts for entertainment.

My thoughts turn to all the appliances I have seen along the train tracks. It seems excessive; I’ve seen refridgerators, stoves and dishwashers. There have been a lot of tires too. Haven’t seen the roads that someone would have had to take to dump these things and I doubt they’ve come off trains. I think it bears further investigation.

I doubt anyone is actually going to read any of this and if they do, they will probably regret it, but I want to get my 300 words out as an example to Laurie. She needs to jot down shit everyday. I should make her read the whole thing, although, I am almost done. We’re at the top of the Altamont. Makes it time to drop into Tracy, then Lathrop and then my 60-minute walk home. Yea!

As we slide out of the hills towards Tray, people from the top start to come downstairs. They are preparing to leave. I am going to have to look up top some time. I figure half the people on the train get off in Tracy with another large chunk at Lathrop. I don’t know what percentage of people ride all the way to Stockton, but I am not one of them. I am off at the next station so the notebook has to go away and I’m done. Tomorrow maybe real writing… we shall see.

Till tomorrow fight fans.