Rail Rides and True Adventures Archives - Page 5 of 6

Bad luck freight-hopping from Hyattsville to Cumberland

At 3 p.m., I was watching a film at the National Gallery. By 5:20 p.m. I was riding a grain

Up in western Maryland, nestled in the Alleghenies, is the crew-change town of Cumberland. You can go west on CSX

Some days you can’t put it off any longer. I had found a storage facility for my repeatedly vandalized car,

On a Friday, I quit my job. The following Tuesday, I was in Weed, looking for a freight. Maybe I

Browning once wrote: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp / Or what’s a heaven for?” He understood,

In “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” Yeats wrote about the loss of youthful elan: “Now that my ladder’s gone, I must

Most of us fail most of the time. This year has provided ample personal evidence – besides falling on my

If Truckee didn’t have a corrupt Greyhound agent, I would have missed the next day’s ride over the Sierras. I

Every time I flexed my right arm, the triceps ached. Yep, the train I had just jumped had probably been

Since coming to California, I have gloried in escaping the puny scale of the East, where diminished people live in