zesty_pinto | Adventures in Geek Gaming

Okay, I'm spoiled. I'll admit it. I've been a New Yorker for so long that I'm not used to using a car. Today was one of those days when I wished I did, even though I had no access to a car.

I ended up taking a cab to a train station where the last train for the night was supposed to go. Because my cellphone broke today (today was a lucky day in that way), someone I knew helped call up a cab for me. They said it would come in 15-20 minutes. This call was made at 10:10.

It comes in at 10:44.

Exclaiming that the last train is at 10:47, he tries to drive me to the station without any apology or anything else, apparently wanting to get paid for his efforts. he drops me off, but it's at 10:47, so I ask him if I can be dropped off at Secaucus instead. He calls his boss, and he says no because he has to return to Newark to pick up for a wedding. As though to offer consolation, he then says that usually if the station was closed, the entrance would be blocked off. I pay him the exorbitant fee of 8 bucks for 2 miles and rush through and wait.

And wait.

I wait until almost 11. Realizing my position, I have no choice but to walk. But walking from town to town was impossible and would require traversing the edge of the highway. Not something I am comfortable with, for many reasons.

Scenarios:
1. Being Friday night, I end up getting the front end of a driver that didn't anticipate some dink to be walking along the edge of the slow lane. Of course, this driver would be more responsible, but it being Friday night, also enjoyed a few drinks, making their reaction a little unprepared for the unexpected.
2. Some guy pulls over and offers me a ride. I refuse to be nice, and several days later my face is on a milk carton.
3. I reenact a game over scenario in "Frogger" in all of its pixelated splattered glory.

So, looking at the tracks, I step along them with the reluctance of a swimmer in early morning lake water.

This is the first time I have ever walked along train tracks. Estimating my previous travel paces at a full march, I know I move at a rate of 1.5-2.5 miles an hour. The round stones that support the rail beams get felt with every forced foot even when I step along the planks. Still, it proves possible as I end up finding myself approaching a station that is in the exact opposite direction of where I want to go. I turn around and head back, glad to know that the station itself was only a mile away from the other station.

Along the way, deadhead trains pass by, which I always yield to, freezing in position against the night backdrop along the edge fo the round stone ramps that hold its tireless tracks. They pass by without much notice and come once every twenty minutes to hour. Otherwise, the ways are fairly noiseless except for the endless noise of round stones being battered by my feet as I trudge along the train's tracks, sometimes with me pushing my foot heel first into a small hole that leaves my shoe feeling a little moist on the end.

Along the way, as my eyes attempt to adjust to the night and the solitary streetlights that attempt to share its brilliance into my direction and foul my vision, I try to switch from track to track to make sure that I do not end up catching a train by accident because I was blinded by the lighting. My two biggest fears while walking along the tracks are going under a tunnel and crossing a potentially perilous bridge.

Of course, one of the things I end up going under is a dark silent and empty tunnel. It is dead quiet, and darkness covers it all, a perfect blanket of night. The only way I cross without fumbling against the rail spikes embedded in the tracks is through the light of my broken cellphone's keypad which still functions despite a fouled up LCD cover and a broken hearing end. It is the only other thing I notice as I travel across and to be honest I am deathly grateful that there was no train that crossed through; the mechanical noise would have echoed into an awful roar within the endless emptiness of the tunnel.

Eventually, the tracks leave the tunnel and civilization and then enter marshland. The road is also thankfully easier to traverse; packed peat meets the round stones and I can step more easily across. The air is also more comforting as an enjoyably crisp cold breeze touches the fresh sweat of my body as I cross through about a mile after that station. It would be two to three more miles of this walking before I get home, and along the way I end up wakening the marsh animals; startling skunks into a scurry. At one point I almost flinch with fear at the machine gunned fleeing of sleeping ducks, who take my crossing with a fear that is shared between both me and the ducks. Otherwise, the way is slow but enjoyable, and I think of Hemingway's "In Our Time" collection, wondering if this is how Hemingway himself may have felt as he walked along the roads and the shantytowns that existed around and between the way. Other times, I think about how there are soldiers who do this everyday and I wonder what sort of soldier I would have made if I actually was part of the Armed Forces with the body to match for it.

Somewhere between, a cop car, which rests by the road, flashes a search light at me. Unsure if I commited a crime or not, I approach the man and explain the situation. He seems a bit estranged by the whole process, as am I. When I ask him if what I'm doing is okay, he says it is, just that he doesn't expect people to be walking along the train tracks, much less at 1 in the morning. To this, I immediately agreed and continued on my way, thanking him for his advice but almost wishing that he would take me in so that I would get a free ride home.

I keep heading along the tracks, endlessly silent until I start to hear the sound of the highway bridges and the automobiles. Their gutteral dopplar whooshes sometimes made me stare back to check if a train was approaching or not. It is a welcome sensation, though, since it also told me that I was close to home.

Finally, I begin to see home again, but then I come to another conclusion that I wished I didn't see: there was a bridge. A one-track bridge, at that. Hoping for the best, I cross along creaky planks over a 30 foot drop into a very dirty river. My mind hoped that that cop remembered I was here in case something did happen. It feels like forever, but in five minutes, I cross the bridge; five minutes that felt longer than that hour of walking I had done.

Across the bridge, I ended up waking up the dogs to an animal shelter half a mile away from the noisy clatter of my worn shoes against stones. It finally comes with one bonus that made me happy though; there was a driving road not far from the track across the bridge. It was not a short while afterward that I spent walking through an almost empty street into the townhouse I called home. I hope I still remember it; there was something there that I gained in that long trip; a little extra bravery and something to hopefully consider as I write future things in my literary work.