7256 - A short ride

Toronto, ON

At 9:30AM our train rolls in. Turns out the 104 is many hours late, but here it is. I'm up and awake, actually catching up on the journal. Josh & Cricket are still in camp across the tracks. I climb over the train to retrieve my pack and to get on this ride. This is expected to be a very short crew change so there is not much time to find a ride. The only rideables within running distance are mini-wells. These are somewhat less than two feet deep and do not offer much protection from prying eyes or the weather. Having tried one on for size one night in the 36th street UP yard in Denver, this will be the first time I actually ride anywhere in one. We board our train and as soon as Via Rail passes us, we lurch forward and gain speed. Soon we go through the wye ,on the northside and we really are Montreal bound this time. I lay down to watch the clouds roll overhead while I roll across Ontario.

20 some miles out of town a "GO Train", which is a form of public transportation here in Toronto pulls abreast of us on adjacent tracks. It starts pacing us which is very unusual. Shortly thereafter the Go Train is blowing his horn furiously and it becomes clear to us all that the crew on the transit train have spotted us from overhead. They speed off and our train starts slowing down.

Eventually we stop at the station where I can hear somebody talking animatedly trying to find us. In the states these searches are pretty cursory and don't amount to much effort but here it is different. Soon enough Cricket and I are pulled off the train by an irate CN worker who is demanding to know where the third person is. Apparently Josh has bailed off and is in hiding. We refuse to rat and they get back on the train looking for Josh. The crew from the GO Train are gleefully participating in this as though it where an easter egg hunt. The CN worker eventually finds Josh hiding in an empty container on the very same car that he was on originally.

By now the local cops are here and we are handed off to them because the resident CN bulls are "out picking up bodies" as we are told. The cops seem more amused by us than anything else and greet us with wide grins and a few chuckles. Marvelling at our grimy appearance they want to know how many days short of a shower we are. Constable Stanway takes our ID's and runs them for warrants, this is getting old by now. Once again we clear the check and Stanway informs us that they are dropping all charges and that we are free to go but that we must vacate the premises before we can leave. This is sort of a dilemma because we want to go back to Toronto to catch out again. The other option is to hitchhike back, but this will certainly prove difficult, it being three of us, and all in a class of befoulment unknown even to seasoned cops.

We hit Stanway up for a ride in his cruiser but he refuses. He does however spend the next 30 minutes trying to find us a ride back to town that we can afford. When he returns he says that the best deal is $7 and that it's on the Go Train. Shit.
This means that we'll be riding the cushions back to Toronto on the very same transit that caused us to be ejected from our eastbound stacks.

Hour and a half later we are back in Toronto at Union Station. After some standing around Cricket manages to get us some free tickets to TTC transit from a bus driver who is taking a smoke break. We have to take two buses to get back to the catch out and after getting off the first one we go hit the trash bin of a fruit and vegetable grocer and come up with tomatoes, plums and apples for a late lunch. Behind this store there is an older chinese man gardening and I go back around to ask him for water which he is more than happy to supply to us. After a stop at the beer store and another lengthy bus ride we're back under the bridge waiting for our train. This time we have beer and the time seems to pass a lot more quickly.

Suddenly, two somewhat inebriated youths show up under the bridge. They are both suburb wanksta types, wearing basketball inspired clothing four sizes too big. They do however come carrying a load of food and booze they have just heisted from somewhere or another. "What have we here?" "Trainhoppers?" says the drunker of the two. "Are you hungry?" says the other one. They sit down and share their expensive booty with us and once again I'm eating rather well on a complete strangers ticket. They wish us luck and leave us the leftovers.

The wait is back on and we settle down to a long discussion about the merits of taking personal responsibility for ones own consumption in the pursuit of greater good for collective society. As it turns out my travelling companions are much of the same school of thought as myself. Josh reveals that he would like to get a co-op living situation going to have somewhere to base operations from and to come up with ideas for direct action. He's also in the process of building a grease truck out of an Isuzu Trooper. This will be a dual fuel vehicle that runs on diesel and vegetable oil, the main source of fuel actually coming from grease dumpsters, effectively cutting the cost of fuel by more than half. If you don't believe this, ask Willie Nelson. He's been touring on the stuff for the last five years.

A few minutes later a large group of kids show up under the bridge with cookies, cheerios and a large satchel of weed. They have a thousand questions for us about riding trains as it seems that most of them have not been too far out of Ontario. When asked what they want to do when done with high school, a common answer is "Go to Northern Ontario." Go figure that one out...."make sure you bring an adequate supply of drinking water" I think to myself.