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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Well I hope I wasn't talking about anything obscene, or in the case of this last story anything perverted at all, rather just relating a story about Higgins and me, and some clean cut play and how nutty those times were... I think most of us have progressed quite a distance since then, but we can look back, right, and chuckle? But you wonder why I wasn't right in the thick of any rivalry per se. I was too busy getting into trouble.
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Werner, did you really ride the freights with Kauk to Colorado? I'd like to hear about that adventure.
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illusiondweller
Boulder climber
San Diego, CA
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And, one night, at band camp........
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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One moment someone tells me to post up some more stories. The next moment someone tells me to shut up. I can't always promise the best story. Perhaps they should be rated and approved first.
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Wild Bill
climber
Ca
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Pat, please don't listen to any of your detractors. The stories are great fun, and well told. I for one am enjoying all your posts (climbing related or not!) I started climbing in the late '80's, one or two generations after you, but your imprint was visible then.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Just keep goin' with those stories and don't look back Oli.
We're right here enjoying the read.
Great stuff.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Yee-Haw!
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Pat & Werner...great stories. I hopped trains back in Philly that were going south. I talked my friend Jackie into doing it several times. We made it pass Balitmore a few times. We had to be back for dinner...we were fourteen at the time.
Pat...just read your full interview on climbing.com...maybe one of the all time best.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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This is why the staco rules, where else do you get this kind (Werner/Ament) of witness?
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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That's a great story, Werner, and well told. You were a real mentor to Ron. My first freight ride was from Fresno to Colorado. Probably everyone has heard the story too many times. I tend to forget what I've already told, and so I say it all again.
The big four went up onto the North America Wall (1964, fall), and I should have been the 4th on that team, were Chouinard not to have shown, but Chouinard did finally turn up and had more tenure at the time, so I left the Valley, a bit hurt, and with Rick Horn hitched with a race car driver who scared us out of a few years life, speeding down to Fresno. At the Fresno yards, under starlight, waiting for a train, we ran into Wil Noel, an old black guy in a suit with no shoes. He asked which way to Chinatown. We pointed both north and south, since there is a Chinatown in LA and also San Francisco. He said some guys had jumped him and beaten the hell out of him. They had smashed his hands against the track. He showed me his badly broken hands. They stole his shoes so he would chase them. They stole his white Stetsin hat. Anyway, he and I struck up a conversation. It was more him talking. "I have a Christmas name N O E L, Wilbur Noel," he said. When he was in the Navy, he told me, he had actually spoken with the President, JFK. "Wilbur," the President said... And then he told me I was the only person in his life who had ever listened to him and that I was his best friend. The whole while he was holding my right hand with his left (in a kind of endless handshake) with the bones of his hand jutting into my hand. He kept saying, "May the Lord strike me with lightning if I is lyin'." And I would take a step back, just in case, but he said he wanted to look me up when he got to Colorado. Rick hadn't said a word this whole time. Wilbur found a piece of cinder, like charcoal, and an old discarded paper cup, and wrote my address on it. Then he wandered off in the dark. I often think of him. I was impressionable, at 17. A yardsman told us of a train heading north, but it would take us to the next yard in Roseville where we could catch a train over the Sierra east, over Donner Pass, and into the desert of Nevada and more. We caught the first train out of Fresno and rode all night slowly to Roseville. The train out of Roseville was moving fast already. The sun was coming up slow, but here I was doing a mantel onto a moving flatcar with a heavy pack, my feet nearly brushing the wheels...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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No kidding Jaybro,
This is so fun, you and I and lots others who post up like to read:
This is like sitting down in the middle of a novel while the words are woven around us.
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WBraun
climber
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Pat
Those were the daze my friend ...
Believe it or knott. Fresno has a Chinatown, and maybe Noel was referring to that?. It's actually Fresno's skid row.
Wil Noel sounds like a good man. There are many like this on the skid row.
So after getting on the freight train, our car actually was a new vehicle transport train car. I don't remember what make vehicles were on it and they were locked. Bummer, as we would have gotten in one.
The freight trains are LOUD! They are so loud that they will give one the most wicked headache. Bring ear protection and lots of water in the summer. Also in the long tunnels bring oxygen, as you'll soon find yourself choking out your life force. Cough, cough, choke
So Kauk asks me "is this train going to California as we ride into the sunset. "Ron, these tracks go west and west is Calif. so relax man". "And look over there, ... is I-80"
I go to sleep and Ron wakes me and hour later and tells me he can't see I-80 anymore. I tell him not to worry as it's not going to perfectly parallel the interstate all the way. Back to sleep I go.
Later in the deep night Ron wakes me again. Bright lights everywhere, train had stopped and he asks me where we are now.
Eureka! I told him we are now in the Salt Lake city yard and we better get off before the train security show up. Off we go and finally out of the yard Ron spies a car and the license plates say Idaho. I told him that's a visitor from out of state.
Little later ..... Ron says, "How come all the vehicles have Idaho plates?" Hahahaha
Sh'it, Where in the fuk are we now? Plus it's like 2 in the morning and no one around. We get into town and find this open all night classic grease grill coffee shop with all these old timer farmer types in there and waitress has the beehive hairdoo.
We poke in there and ask Mrs. Beehive what town is this?
Pocatello Idaho came the reply ...... hahahaha
Oh Sh'it! and way off topic!
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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This must be the place- best stories ever
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Once when I went out by freight train to California to see another girl who lived in Berkeley, I visited my friend Mort Hempel who was going through his serious troubles with the effects of acid, and he must have been spooked when I showed up at his door with my face covered in black train soot. Anyway, when I had to return, Mort and my girl friend drove me to Stockton, where I could best get my train home. I can't right at this moment remember if it was this time, but in Stockton I met a fellow who sat with me along the track for a while. He had a little white dog named Skinner. The fellow collected scrap metal and sold it for a few pennies per pound. I thought of the pitons in my pack. I had something like twelve dollars to my name and gave him six. He was eternally grateful. All alone through those million miles of Utah and Nevada desert. For the last hundred miles into Salt Lake, before dawn, I was on what's called a flat-wheeler. The car bounced up and down so hard, that as I lay there trying to sleep my body flew repeatedly up and down, about a foot off the floor of the car, bang bang bang, until my bones were nearly rattled free of my body. If I tried to do that now I would simply die. Going through the 9 mile (or however long it is) Moffat Tunnel, underneath the Continental Divide, you have to hold your sleeping back out in the wind first and get it filled with air, then crawl in and hold the opening shut tight, and hold your breath as long as possible, then start breathing slowly, using up as little of the precious air as possible... or breathe the thick black smoke in the tunnel. Finally they put some blowers in there, and it's still bad but much better. Always the best part of this familiar trip was to come through that last tunnel and see the Yellow Spur sticking up against the eastern plain...
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Thank you! Fiery gems, sparkling and brightening all around them.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 7, 2007 - 10:26am PT
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Really fine tales, guys.
Reminds me of the refrain from the old Roger Miller tune,
“ I’m a man of means by no means,
The King of the Road…”
If anyone wants to get a feel for what Pat describes, the stretch of track from Eldorado Canyon through the Moffat tunnel to Winter Park is a beautiful train ride,that includes passage through canyons that are inaccessible by road. There is a train that runs from Union Station in Denver to Winter Park ski resort in the ski season. I have taken it several times and I always think of Pat when it comes around the corner high above the south side of Eldorado Canyon and later, when it pulls into the Moffat Tunnel beneath the Continental Divide. Being in that pitch black tunnel choking on thick diesel smoke must have been a very long and terrifying ten minutes. It's much more comfortable from the inside of the rail car.
This site has some pictures of the route: http://www.skitrain.com/
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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I can't get this image of a strangely alluring climber chick named Oli-via chasing down a freight train in a dress and high heel EBs out of my mind.
Do I need counseling?
Or am I already out of my mind?
Fabulous stories and the best thread drift of all time.
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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You're confusing the two entries. I dressed up on Halloween in Yosemite, as a prank date for Higgins' friend. And then later I rode freight trains. By the time of the freights I was back to my old self.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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These are great stories, I look forward to more.
Those trains, do people still ride them? Or have they found ways to make it more difficult now?
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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I have deleted a couple of my entries, because apparently I offended someone. That has never been my intent.
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