To: Gauguin who wrote (50892 ) 5/21/2000 5:49:00 PM From: Crocodile Read Replies (4) | Respond to
What happens between the first and second time you were awake? Are you sposed to get up? Is that the rule? And that nothing happened that should?
I don't know... I usually dream...
Actually, I'm usually awake 3 or maybe 4 times before I really start my day... Maybe at 3 and then 4 and 5 and then finally get up at 6...
I sleep where I can see outside... watch the sun rising off across the fields... watch the sky as it turns from black to grey and then through all of that range of colours that mean dawn... I can even sit up and look out another window and watch the sun as it strikes the forests and races backwards...across the fields...towards the rising sun... .
And there are bird feeders that I can see from bed...with my hand under my head... as I think about getting up... a seed feeder and a hummingbird feeder... right against the windowpane...
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I don't know why railroad spikes bend, or are bent. I expect you're right about how it happens... That they absorb so much of the power of the train, that over time, they are bent... it becomes part of their history...
The only spikes... or I guess they are nails...that I know much about are horseshoe nails...
They are sharp... really sharp... and squared... and have a point that is more chiselled on one side than the other... So that when you drive them into the horse's hoof, they start to bend on their own...towards the outside... so that they will come out the side of the hoof where you can clinch them off to hold the shoe on... Otherwise, if they were just straight, or unclinched, they would just slide back out and the shoe would fall off... The chisel-point and the bend and the clinch all have their purpose...
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I've spent quite a bit of time near railways tracks... Not, like... "near" as in being a block away, but being close to trains... right at eye level...
I used to live near to a place where several busy railway lines led into the heart of Montreal. I crossed them every morning and evening on my way to and from school.
They were extremely dangerous tracks to cross. It was actually illegal for us to cross them, because they were so busy and dangerous. But the alternative was a half hour bus ride to high school, versus a 10 minute walk... but it involved a dash over the busy tracks... where there were freight trains and high-speed commuter trains roaring by... Our parents didn't want us crossing, but they couldn't really stop us... Think they just had to hope that we were savvy and wouldn't get hit...
Sometimes the railway police would try to catch us and give us fines...but they just made us take more risks... made it harder for us, so that we'd take more chances and maybe get hurt crossing at one of the more dangerous places along the tracks...
The path over the tracks was winding... There were two double sets to cross... and there was a deep ditch in between the sets... You would try to get across one set... make it into the ditch between, and then wait for a chance to get over the second set... Then, when you crossed those, all you had left to cross was the the 2 & 20 highway going into the city... That wasn't so hard at first,. but it got to be more dangerous than the tracks after awhile...as Montreal grew and grew and the traffic got to be a mass of cars... pelting along with only the odd space here and there between them....
But I only remember a couple of kids ever getting hit in the 5 years that I went over the tracks... and neither of them got hurt badly... Just sort of spun around and tossed... Really quite amazing, isn't it... But a bus got hit by a train at a level crossing at least once... I think actually 3 times if I remember right... kids got injured...
I think we might have been safer taking our own chances... weighing the risks for ourselves... as we ran across the rails and the highway each day...
But gee, I was going to say something more about the trains..and the tracks... as seen and heard from eye level when you were standing down in the ditch between the sets of tracks...
It was awesome... The flexing of the tracks... the way the trains bobbed up and down as they raced along the rails... Every kind of train different... even the different cars... especially the sound...
It was amazing to stand with your eyes closed and listen to the trains just a few feet away from your head... Listen to hear the changing sound of the wheels on the tracks... one sound for an oil tanker, another for a long flatbed car with ship containers, another for boxcars, or 2-decker commuter cars, or metal-slatted cattle cars with livestock mooing as they raced by....and then the caboose...
When you had been "doing it" for years, you knew how long the train was even though it stretched off way down the track... knew how many cars long it would be... knew how soon it would end... by the sound... the beat... the speed of the sound modulations... the pitch...
Years later, I lived in a crappy little trailer next to a shunting yard for about a year... Heard all of the strange sounds of trains as they shunted during the night... The screeches... the sounds of rails moving... crashes and slams as the cars mashed together... At first it kept you awake... and later, but after awhile it woke you up when it stopped...
Odd how we become conditioned to sounds... how they become part of our lives... Sitting in my truck beside a level crossing can still give me a rush... put me into that "alert mode" that was required to know when to run... when not to...
