At The Tracks

                                                Seriously...do you know what this says?

Today,.I took the long way to work thinking that I needed a change in scenery. Well I got it. Normally when I take this route I would see open fields, large farms, a few small businesses that are no longer open, and if I was lucky a few deer frolicking in the fields. But today all I saw was the side of a train.

As I approached the tracks I saw that the train was moving rather slowly, maybe three miles an hour in my estimation. And although waiting for trains to pass can be somehow frustrating, I wasn’t going to let this bother me as I had left a few minutes early anyway.

So I am waiting as this ridiculous train passes by, 5 min, 10 min…O ‘come on…how long is this thing?

Well, apparently each train car is between 55.5 to 58.2 feet long. So if the train had 100 cars on it, it would have been 5500 ft. long not including the space that is in between the cars. We are talking well over a mile-long train I figured. (I figured all this out as I was waiting…. but what I didn’t figure out was the time it would take for this train to pass. (I know…A mile-long train traveling at 3 miles an hour would take 20 min.) I Just didn’t think about it at the time, Instead, I was just getting frustrated. So what did I do next? I played a game of poker on my phone. What were you expecting, me to take a detour? No that’s what a person in their right mind would do. I obviously wasn’t.

So during my poker game, I happened to notice that the train was no longer moving at a snail’s pace, in fact, it wasn’t moving at all.  Are you flipping kidding me right now? Now is when I thought about taking the detour, but wait, I was in the middle of a poker game for a million dollars (um play money of course) How could I leave now? I had to make a decision quickly.

So after I finished my game I looked at my clock and it had been 25 minutes. That’s when I actually decided to leave and take a detour. I accepted the fact that I was going to be late.

Now having told this long ass story about me waiting for the train, I didn’t tell you what I saw.

What I saw while I was actually watching the train traveling at 3 miles an hour was Graffiti on the sides of the train. I have never really put much thought into the graffiti that I see on trains….but when they are moving so slow…you actually have time to read them and admire some of the artwork.

Oh wait…did I say read them?  I meant look at them and try to understand what they actually say. Because by no means could you possibly read 95 percent of them.  Which really baffles me because some of them you could tell had really good art skills. But what good does it do if no one can read them. It just looks like someone didn’t know how to spell. If I were going to put my name on a train and actually take the time and money to put in the materials that you need to do so….I would make sure everyone would be able to read my name. And it would be on the middle of the train car…not just the area I could reach. I mean there in front of you there is a blank canvas and all you can do is write on the portion that you can reach? Dude, I would so carry a ladder and keep it by the tracks somewhere so when I find the urge to write my name on a train so everyone stuck at the tracks watching the train go by could see it, They would not only see that it is as big as the train car itself…but they could obviously read that it said:

IANSTEIN