As promised, this is the story of how Larry and I rode the rails on a yacht strapped to a freight car. It starts with our trying to hitchhike west from Montreal. We got a few hundred miles, but then no one was picking us up and it was starting to get late. We saw a slow moving freight, and Larry, who had worked in rail yards in his past, said we should hop on. We did, and son came to a freight yard. I waited while Larry poked around. He found a new cabin cruiser strapped to a freight car and surprisingly unlocked. 
It was something like this photo, only substitute a flatbed rail car for the truck bed. We hopped aboard and made ourselves comfortable. We were soon rolling. We had picked up some food and a bottle of wine at a little store and had an evening picnic on the deck, watching the woods roll by–an odd feeling from the deck of a boat. It got dark, and surprisingly cold for July. Continue reading “Riding the rails”