I should probably move….. (214/365)

Aug 2, 2015 – It’s a good thing we don’t have fast trains here 😉

We went for a bike ride this afternoon, it turned into a lot of uphill. That’s the problem with living in North Vancouver, it has lots of hills, and if you choose to ride down to the waterfront….it’s just that, DOWN!

And that means lots of back UP to get home.

I can’t decide what’s worse, a fairly short but incredibly brutal hill, or taking the long and winding way home; up a bit here, over a bit there, up some more here, over some more there.

In the end I think the short and brutal up might have been better.

We encountered this same train three times on our ride. We rode above it over an overpass at the bottom of McKay Road, then stopped and took some shots of it on the tracks by Mosquito Creek Marina. I get the shot, but then it started rolling towards where we were and we missed the crossing, so we had to ride back up to Esplanade and over it again at BCIT’s Marine Training Campus and across to Waterfront Park. Finally, we ended up riding alongside it along Low Level Road as we made our way over to MEC.

I don’t really know why, but I’ve always loved trains. I love the low and heavy rumble of their engines, exuding power. When I was younger I loved going to both of my grandparent’s places in Canoe. If we’d been picking fruit in the orchard at Grandma & Grandpa’s, in the heat of the afternoon when it had become far too scorching hot to pick any more fruit in the orchard, we’d escape to the cool waters of Canoe Beach. And when the heat became oppressive at Granny & Grandad’s farm, we’d head to the same place. When I was little, I’d always run up to the tracks as the trains passed; I’d count the cars and wave to the caboose driver.

Later the town installed a huge culvert so beachgoers wouldn’t have to walk across the tracks. When a train came rumbling along I loved running into the culvert underneath the passing train and feeling the earth shake and listening to the deafening roar as it went overhead. A few years back I passed through and stopped at the beach, it was out of season, and I just stood on the beach and remembered days long gone. As I stood there, a train passed, and I went into the culvert and felt the past wash over me.

I also used to love going to my Auntie Clara’s cottage just out of town. The cottage backed onto two sets of tracks and when I’d hear a train coming I’d run out to put pennies on the rails. The problem was that I didn’t know which track the train was on until it was almost on top of me since the tracks came around a bend. So I’d stand there, pennies in hand, bouncing back and forth between the tracks, waiting until I could tell which rails to place them on. Then I’d dash off the tracks, usually to the sound of an ear shattering horn as the engine bore down on me.

After the train had passed (and I had counted all the cars and waved to the caboose driver), the hunt for my flattened pennies began.

I never said it was a smart thing to do…..but it was fun.

Clearly some things don’t change with time 🙂