Eugene to Sacto
When I met Nicole we were in Eugene drinkin' in the park at 7th and Jefferson - I'm sure alot of people know this park. But me and my traveling partner at the time were sittin' there drinkin' some cisco (I know it's bad) when a couple walked up to us. They just got off a train from Portland and were gonna head south again but needed some stuff. So we got drunk together and some of the kids Nicole was with headed to the yard and her and another kid stayed behind. The next day we ran into them again outside Pizza Pipeline and they said they were headed to the yard and going south. Well me and Justus (my traveling partner at the time) had nothing better to do, so we went with them. Along the walk (VERY LONG WALK TO YARD) some of my friends drove by and gave us a ride to the catch out spot - that made things nice.
We waited about 20 mins and an IM train pulled up. Nicole got on the first pig she saw, me and Justus and Nicole's friend headed for the rear unit. The engineer saw us and told us not to ride the power, but he didn't care if we were on other cars, so we went back where Nicole was and got on. The train pulled outta Eugene and we were on our way. The train was headed for LA but we wanted to get off in Sacto. Anyway we went to sleep ( I know I'm stupid, the ride from Eugene to K Falls is so nice, but I've done it many times). Somehow we made it through K Falls OK. 4 of us on 1 pig. That's kinda asking to get caught, but we made it through. This is where I get stupid. We're around Shasta and I was cold as shit due to lack of good gear, my dumbass wakes up and throws my blanket off the train for no reason. I didn't know what I did until it was too late (I know I'm stupid) so I froze for a while when everyone else was warm. It was only about 3 hours 'til the sun came up, but when you're on a hotshot in Shasta you are still not warm even if the sun is hot as shit.
But we got about 30 miles from Sacto and we stopped on a 2 mile so me and Justus and the friend went up to talk to the engineer. We asked about the back unit, but were denied (we didn't know we were only 30 miles out) so we told him we were headed to Sacto and he said the train doesn't stop there, but it stops in Stockton. Since there is a speed limit through Sacto he said he would slow it down enough for us to get off (yeah right, 10 to 15) I don't care if you've done it a million times, it's still hard to get off a train going 10 to 15. we got off OK except when I threw my pack off everything broke open (lack of good gear) but I wasn't that upset - it was just a couple things. So here we were in Sacto our destination - we made it safe and everything was good until we hopped to Oakland but that comes in a different story...