like Old Familiar High, this is yet again another train song.
unlike Old Familiar High, this speaks on my experiences with trains and not my second hand experiences.


My "long road ahead" is in reference to the first successful train ride. An open boxcar out of New Orleans. It was a must because I needed to get out of town & had no clue how else to do it, as the city was so large & home was so far away.

"One hell of a week" was just a few days later, when I waited under a bridge for over a week due to a bad storm to catch another train from Pensacola, FL back home.

"Bottom of a ditch" was about the time I got home, I was hopping out of Ryder Park in Jacksonville. Waiting down in a ditch to find a 4am daily hotshot toward Chicago. Got off just past Lagrange, GA and hitched up to Atlanta.

"Mends with the maker I'd meet" came after Atlanta showed to be a bust, I caught out of the Decatur Yard on the first thing that would stop. Ironically in the sleet & woke up disconnected in Madison, GA -- which I've been singing about now for quite some time. One of my fondest memories in all my travels was my stint in Madison, because of all the kind folks that I met there who made it so memorable.

"One way out of hell when I'm tired of thirst" caused by having hitched back to Atlanta, walked for days south into College Park & woke up one morning in another ditch to my train siding heading south. Turned out to be the same train I caught up there. It was only when we passed through LaGrange, I knew it was so.

"Facing flames from shadows & hoping this won't hurt" was surrounding the several different pals took at different times on their first train. One in particular was a ruckus of an adventure & one I speak on a lot in songs. When we showed up at the hop out, there was a hobo there smoking crack in the shadows of the burned down squat & painting euros barefoot. We put him on the boxcar with us when we left, where he chose to stay in the shadowed corner fo the boxcar, continuing to smoke crack & paint euros. Sometime on that ride, one of my pals became blacked out as he sat on the edge of the train. Scared the hell out of me, as any moment he coulda fell & I'd have been fucked -- doing 70 down some tracks away from a body that may need help but likely destroyed by the fall & impact.

She ain't gonna leave - She ain't gonna leave me tonight. Damn right she ain't. I left with her. Each and every ride here, I went with her.

I became unsatisfied with the toll I paid to leave with her. I was hiding, far and few between having healthy days & if I didn't hide well, I was looking at facing criminal charges. I invested in a touring bicycle thanks to the folks at ZenCog & put forth a ton of effort into riding out of town if I needed to get somewhere. A pal chose to do the same thing, cycling and what not but one weekend we figured we could hop out with our bikes & have a ton of fun. On our way back, we were pulled off & booked for a century old misdemeanor "riding a train without paying a fare." In my one free call home, my mother said she couldn't risk bailing me out & conferenced in my brother who was also unable to afford my bail -- bringing out "what it took to hear my kin say no & knowing I'd die dead broke".

"Years down the road // living my dream" was on a few years back, I was fortunate enough to catch a ride on the highline out of Whitefish, MT to Bonners Ferry, ID. This was a line that I'd always dreamed of catching going from what research I've done, coast to coast mostly along the border of Canada.

"It'll end where it all began // wearing my ring" referencing the last train I caught going from Jax to south FL with my wife. As my first attempt at riding a train was this same line & we got pulled off before making it out of Duval Count limits by 9 officers with guns drawn.