August 5, 2006

  • I am home now and have been for a couple of days. I guess I should write about the rest of the trip. I also guess I should be brief, yo. Tuesday, we went to the zoo. I'm not a big fan of the zoo, but my sister had planned for us to go and my nieces really wanted to go, in fact, the first few days I was there, they talked A LOT about the zoo. I have never been an animal person, but that being said, I can't help but feel zoos are bad for animals. I don't want to sound like a hippie PETA person, but honestly, are animals really meant to be caged up like that? Anywho, it was ok, its not like I had a bad time, except that towards the end of the day, it started fucking pouring out.


    Wednesday, my train did not leave until later in the day, so it gave us time to do something else. We went to a place that had dinosaur footprints and what not. It was pretty cool, but probably not worth going into too much detail here. We also went to Red Rocks, which for those of you that don't know, is a really cool natural amphitheater. Again, not much to talk about, but I will have lots of cool pics to post.


    All in all, to be partially honest, for many reasons, I think it will be a long time before I visit my sister, I won't go into too many details, but although its not like we fought, she and I have nothing in common and there were a lot of other things that make me think twice about going out there.


    My train was supposed to leave on Wendesday night at 7:25 in the PM. When I arrived, I was promptly told that it would be at the very least 3 hours late. This gave me lots of time to spare, and so I didn't feel like calling my sister, I walked around downtown Denver. The Rockies were playing a game a couple of blocks away, so I walked over there. It was before the game started, so I walked around the park just to take in the atmosphere of a MLB not at Wrigley Field. The game had not yet started and there were a lot of people moving in and around the park.  It was cool.


    After about a half hour, I headed back in the direction of the train station, walking around downtown some more. The train station did not have air conditioning, so I spent my time in front of the station, where I met a nice old man and a 17 year old hot loser. The old man was going back to Syracuse and the loser to Lincoln. This old man was kinda fun and had some cool stories, he was probably in his 60s and the type of old man Kelli would love. The 17 year old was a high school dropout who supposedly had done time in juvie and throughout the night had talked about the drugs he had done and the various crimes he had committed. What a fucking loser.


    Finally, our train came. I had a sleeper room, which meant that I had a VERY tiny room with a bed. Ok, it wasn't even a room, to be honest, it was about the size of a closet. The bed was comfortable, but the constant shaking of the train made it hard to sleep. It was ok, though, because I spent most of my time up and about talking to people. I had found the 17 year old who had made friends with another funny looking 17 year old who seemed to be full of shit. We were down in the lounge/snack area when another cute guy came downstairs. Of all the people on the train, he was the most interesting. He was from California and was headed to Lollapoluza (spelling please) in Chicago. After that he was going to be going some where out east, but he didn't know where. He said he wasn't planning to go back home until the start of September. He describe himself as a leftist hippie, and I think that was right on, the next day on the train, he offered me some pot.


    I really loved traveling  by train. Everybody has a story. There are people traveling from all parts of the country, and most of them alone, which means they have to find a way to entertain themselves, so they talk to strangers. We had one hippie guy (who didn't know there was a shower on the train and didn't believe in deodorant) who was going from Oregon to Maine. An older lady was going from Denver to Washington DC. Some gay guy and his elderly father were heading back home to Greenville NC from Seattle by way of Sacramento. Another guy was going to Chicago from Reno. A couple of young and cute girls were going to Lollapoloza from Des Moines. At first they seemed like complete and utter flakes, but later I found out that one was in law school and the other was a village planner. With the exception of the not sleeping and the delays, train is a wonderful way to travel, especially if you are a people person.


     

Comments (1)

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment