Get It While You Can

            by Adrian de la Fuente

 

            “Fuck fuck fuck shit fuck!” were the only things I could say. The wind was so strong that I could barely keep my eyes open, or even breathe. White-knuckled I wondered to myself how much more of this I could take. I looked over to my left and saw that we were going faster than the cars on the freeway. FUCK! My heart kept on creeping up my throat, but every time I would open my mouth the wind would push it back in. We had just passed Richmond and then I really didn’t know how I was going to get home.

            Chris, Sam, Naomi, Christophe, a Belgian traveler, and I were just eating pancakes at the Denny’s in Emeryville. The night was young and we decided to go explore the construction sight in the Bay Street Mall. Just when we were wondering how we were going to get home, I heard the sound of the train passing by.

            “Let’s take the train home,” I said. Chris, one of the most daring people in the group, eagerly replied, and we started making our way towards the train tracks. everyone else just followed excitedly when I looked back Naomi looked little bit worried and indecisive, so I told everyone, “This is going to be so much fun!!!” to pump them up.

            Naomi gave an awkward smile and said “Let's do it.” We found a dent through the metal rusty fence next to the polluted and hobo infested train tracks.

            I looked back and said, “Are we really going to do this?” Sam looked worried and Christophe was just going with the flow.

            Everyone replied with an uncertain, “Yeah,” but stopped and started thinking twice about it.

            I quickly climbed through and started to persuade everyone. “Come on, we are going to miss the train.”

            Chris and Christophe jumped right through and everyone had to follow.

            “Okay guys, my dad told me that when you jump on a train you always need to jump on the last car, otherwise you can get your foot sucked right underneath the train wheel.” Naomi was always full of random but yet very useful information that her dad gave her. Then Chris started telling the story about how his dad's friend only had one leg from hoping on a train. We waited for the last car to pass by and before anybody could have any doubts we all  hopped on one-by-one. The top was greasy, dirty, and hard to hold onto. We all found a safe and comfortable spot where we couldn’t fall of or get our legs sucked underneath the train wheel.   

            At first we were going through Emeryville and it was fun, we were screaming at cars and we all felt like Ninjas on a secret mission. We were all excited and were talking about how tight it was and how we always wanted to do this. But as soon as we entered Aquatic Park we started to feel a small breeze and a weird tug from the train, we didn’t give much notice and kept on talking about how thrilling it was to be riding a train. Suddenly the conversation was interrupted by Sam asking if the train was speeding up.

            I made a confident gesture and told him, “Trains always slow down by Berkeley.” We all tried to go back to the conversation but it got interrupted by a big yank and the sound of the locomotive getting faster and louder. We all held on tight to the first thing we could put our hands on. The plan was to jump off at University Ave. then walk to my house, and before we knew it the train was going too fast for us to jump off without getting hurt. “Shit! We just passed Berkeley! When is this train going to slow down?” We hoped it would slow down in Albany or maybe Richmond, but no, it kept on speeding up.

            By the time the train slowed down enough for us to be able to hear each other, we had no idea where we were. It was dark and there were no houses and no people that could see us. Every now and then we would see fishermen next to the coast but there was no use to ask for help, the train was too loud and going too fast. That still didn’t stop us from trying.  At this point we started brain storming of ways to get off the train. We could have jumped off, but we didn’t want to risk hurting ourselves because we were going at a high velocity. We could have walked to the front of the train very carefully and asked the conductor to slow down, but that wouldn’t have worked as we could barely hold on, let alone walk the length of the train (and besides, think about how awkward that conversation would have been; “Excuse me, Mr. Conductor…” ). Perhaps we could have unhinged the car from the rest of the train and let it slow down on its own, but that would be way too dangerous for us and the trains that would pass on the same track. Anyways Naomi would shot down any idea with her maternal fury. At the time, it seemed like we had been there forever and there was nothing we could do.

            I looked to my right to see Christophe, and at that moment I realized that throughout this whole time, in all this panic, he had just been smiling calmly and he said to me, “Wow! This is such an American thing to do!” I guess for someone traveling around the world for eight months, hopping a train was no sweat. This was my second real encounter with Christophe.

            We met Christophe in front of the Top Dog on Telegraph Ave. He came up to us and asked if there was anything fun to do. We took him to a club named Henry's right up the street from where we were. Later that night we drove up to Safeway, bought four handles of hard alcohol and a 24 pack, went to my friend Grace's house, and had a party. I got smashed and didn’t really talk to Christophe or at least didn’t remember talking to him. I do remember that I was really busy trying to convince these three chicks to make out with each other and maybe make a porn video later. They had agreed to it under one condition: me being in it.

            However, I had to disappoint them. “Sorry chicks, I’m hitched.”

            Weary of convincing, I went to an easier target and got one of my really drunk friends to streak. That was fun. I took off my shoes to prevent any harm happening to me in my sleep and immediately passed out. The next day I woke up still intoxicated and made myself a power breakfast to prevent a hangover. There was still a small group of us left when I asked what the plan was.

            “Want to go shrooming at the gay pride parade in San Francisco?” they asked me. I was unsure and told them I had never done it before. Christophe told me he never done it before either. Well…I got suckered into doing them; we took our dose and made our way to San Francisco. So you can imagine that my encounters with Christophe after that were kind of heavy but still led to an awesome friendship. 
            Back to the train…wind, speed, panic ahhhhhh!!!!
            Then we entered a tunnel and all I could hear in the dark was Naomi’s voice saying “Don’t do anything crazy, wherever we end up it's okay, as long as we’re alive.” When we emerged from the tunnel that was when I started realizing how beautiful the Bay was at night; a full summer moon, a warm breeze, and no light pollution. Suddenly I didn’t want to get off the train anymore. The further away I got from home the better. I was in control of my own fate. I was pushing the limits of what I could do, where I could be, and who I could be both physically and mentally. I was tearing myself away from everything that was my everyday life and leaving it behind. Would I come back to it? Who knows. But at the moment I didn’t really care.

            Finally the train was going slow enough for us to consider jumping off, but Naomi said that we shouldn’t, that it was best to jump of when the train stopped because we didn’t know if the train would speed up again and we would be separated from each other. The next thing I knew was Christophe running along the side of the train getting off and we all had to follow. Luckily the train didn’t change speeds but even then we were left far from one another. We were in the middle of nowhere.

            Since then my friends and I have had wild adventures, road trips, and taken advantage of every night. We go on midnight swim sessions, pulling all nighters, and decide to go to Santa Cruz at four o’clock in the morning. The experience on the train taught us to have fun under any circumstances and do whatever you want without any worries about what others expect or how they may judge you. So live life on the edge with no regrets and catch the train while you can.