Things I Have Learned From The Railroad

1. It is impossible to get anywhere quickly.

At first I thought that this was some magic trick that the railroad did. Slow tracks, constant delays, waiting for other trains, not to mention the occasional mile hike to do something minor. The more I thought about it, however, the more it seemed to apply to everything else. By car there is traffic and stop lights. Not to mention the fact that no road ever goes straight to where you want to be and there is always some asshole on a bike taking up too much space on the road. Planes go zoom fast, but they are always behind schedule, and it takes forever to get through the terminal. God forbid there is bad weather.

Really, it never pays to rush because causality enforces a speed limit of its own.

2. Pheasants are not more durable than trains.

This should be self-explanitory.

3. Once you get away from the city, it gets really dark really fast.

One thing people often don't realize is that it is actually really dark at night, we just happen to be irradiated by all the lights that are on in the city. Even small towns produce enough wattage to make the darkness not so bad. Once you get out to the country you can't see shit. To illustrate that point the engineer turned off our headlights and all I could see was the nose of the engine illuminated a soft blue by the moon.

4. Wisconsin has possums.

I did not know that.

5. "Dogfucker" is a surprisingly versitile pronoun.

Our engineer really likes that word, and it can be applied to seemingly anything. I don't think I've heard it so many times in my life.


That's it for today, although I'm sure there are many more lesson my exciting life on the rails has to teach me.

Halloween

Well, I just sat on the porch for a few hours for nothing. Three whole children came to our house. They were the neighbor's kids, and they came as a group. Otherwise, nothing. Not a single child the whole night.

What was worse was how many kids skipped our house. Minivans came and went on the intersection that our yard overlooks. They drop off the kids at one end and pick them up on the other. Yuppie bastards who cart their kids around for highest potential gain instead of having them walk around their community. Soccer mommy can't even be bothered to get out of the car to walk with their kids, they just drive along like some giant wind-tunnel-tested vulture. What has the world come to? It wasn't even a cold or windy night! (Not even by my "there is no such thing as cold" standards, it just wasn't cold!)

Of course, when the neighbor's kids saw how much candy I was willing to give them, they were forced to exclaim, "Sweet!" So it wasn't a total loss.

Otherwise I got a water bottle and a taco bell cup thrown at me by teenagers in SUVs as I waited for childrens. Luckily they were crappy aim and I was wearing a raincoat anyway.

I mean, Christ, they didn't even have anything worthwhile to throw at me! This latest generation sucks the most.

Oh well, time to gorge myself on peanut butter filled confections.