First trip

It started in Santa Ana, Ca in Febuary of "88". My two traveling buddies had this brainstorm about hopping a freight train to Oregon for the spring and summer. Never having done this before and them telling me what they had done on these trips I was ready to go. The first thing we did was take city buses through orange and L.A. counties to San Fernando to catch I-5 and hitch a ride to Sacramento and then to Roseville. At the time that's the only yard we were familiar with. Well, needless to say, 3 grungy dudes with packs and bedrolls don't get picked up so we walked alot, uphill. The Grapevine!

We came to a brake check and a trucker had room for one. While Pat and I offered each the spot, Mikey jumped in. Pat and I slept by an onramp across from Magic Mt. The next morning we caught a ride with a van full of pinatas. We were desparate so we crammed in. He left us of in Goshen, stayed there over night and caught a ride with a trucker to Sac. Took all the wrong city buses to Roseville, and FINALLY made it to the yard. Mikey was going to wait but we were 2 days behind him so he met up with a tramp named Travis (TNT) and hopped out for Eugene. Pat and I waited at the rainbow bridge and he briefed me on what he knew. By this time I had been w/o food and smokes for 2 days. I just want to get to EUGENE! 1st train out I'm ready and Pat yells out for his destination, "Oregon". Well that's good enough for me. We hop it, 4-5 hours later it pulls to a siding and cuts air lines and the engine splits. So we wait hoping it hooks back up. 12 hours later we walk into Red Bluff, Ca. Stay the night there and hitchike to Redding. Stay overnite there and hitch to Dunsmuir. There we follow the same approach as we did in Roseville, "Ask the engineer". "Oregon" he says and we hop on. Spend the night getting bounced around Black Butte and finally get to Oregon... Medford, OR.

Pat says were supposed to be in K-Falls and wants to go into town. I said "you go ahead I'm not leaving this yard unless I'm on a train for EUGENE! 12 hours later I talk to a yardhand and gets us on a train for Eugene. It took 27 hours to get to Eugene. 27 hours can you believe that. We get to Eugene at 6:00 am and hop out at the Chambers connector. Not ever jumping from a moving train I just tossed my pack out and jumped. I still feel it in my knees today.