If you gave Sylvia a rail pass, a map, and a schedule...she could rule the world. She looks at these color coded spaghetti graphs for a minute and says things like, "in four minutes the number 22 will take us to the banhof where we'll have three minutes to get to the A2 toward Jägerndorf...it'll be close but we can make it." I could study those Spirograph inspired instruments of torture for three days, with the aid of a slide rule, a sextant, and a Sherpa...and it still would look like a diagram of the endocrine system. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...without Sylvia, I would still be hopelessly circling the freeways of Chicago.
Being on this trip, in Europe, affords us many opportunities to use public transportation. The fact that we rented an RV that is considerably bigger than an average American monster truck in a place where parking cars that are slightly larger than the size of a deck of cards is difficult, also makes public transit much more desirable. I have been on more trains, planes, and busses in the last two weeks than I have been on in the last twenty years. I'm not complaining, in fact Europe does a fairly good job of handling this sort of thing. But it does remind me of something that I would like to tell you about now. (Another story!? Great, now you've got something to complain about).
When I was a wee lad of, I haven't got the foggiest idea, my parents took the clan on a train ride. During the summers we lived in our camper (eery coincidence isnt it?) and, on occasion, we would do something besides slap mosquitoes and peel sunburned skin off our ears. This particular time we traveled to one end of the rail line...then chug... chug.... chugg... chugggg...we slowly made our way back to where the camper was parked. The whole trip probably lasted about two hours but it could have impacted my whole life! Dun Dun DUNNNNNNNNN!
As I said before, I don't know how old I was. I can guess that I was about ten. I was at the age where I still had to be near my parents but didn't have to be watched all the time. I also was at the age where something terrible was avoided and I didn't feel the need to tell my parents. If someone is near my mom, could you crack a window...she might need some air for this one
I'm am very fuzzy on the details of why we would have been on this old fashioned train, but I could paint several pictures of what happened on (or rather between) the cars. Dun... Dun... Oh you get the idea.
My dad and I were coming back from the bathroom on the train, and it was moving. Since memory tends to paint an idealized picture, I peed through a hole in the last car that watered the tracks as we sped along. Truly, it was probably as modern a bathroom as ever and it had its own car to not spoil the old west illusion. The point is, we had to go from one car at the back of the train toward the front. My dad walked first, he was an old pro. Spent time on trains. Was even born in a boxcar (true story). He stepped, like a railway expert, from the front of one car, over the coupling, to the back of the other car...and kept moving forward. I was not so lucky.
I stepped to cross from one car to the next, right over the coupler. The coupler (I'm sure that's not the real name) is like two giant steel spring-loaded hands, both cupped the opposite way of each other. When the conductor wants to add a car to the back of the train, he backs into it, the "hands" hit, spring away from each other, then snap together to form a very strong grasp on each other. Since trains don't travel n a straight line, the couplers need to wiggle. Some might say they shake. There's even a contingency in Bethelridge, Kentucky who claim that they shimmy...but let's not quibble. As long as the cars are pulling forward, there isn't a gap. If the cars in front slow down, the cars in back come forward and there is a gap in the coupler. When I stepped between the cars, the train slowed, a gap opened up, I lost my footing, and stepped right into the gap! Up to my ankle! My size seven and a half Ked was a perfect fit!
I knew enough about trains to know that this wasn't good. In a split second I did the math. A few hundred tons of train ahead of me, a couple hundred tons behind me, the train accelerating, the space between the gap about to get smaller...crap. (Don't go thinking that by using the word "crap" my blog has slipped into some sort of potty mouth abomination...I happen to know that Pastor Matt at our church has said that word in a sermon!...if he says it, so can I) but I digress...So there I am, literally doing a "if a train left Chicago" word problem in my head as my foot is in grave danger.
As you may have guessed, I am quite the cartoon aficionado. I know about injuries. Had the gap closed on my foot, when I pulled it out, it would have looked like a perfectly shaped foot only three times bigger and it would have flapped like a rubber pancake. As opposed to if only my big toe had gotten trapped, where it would have swollen to ten times its shape and glowed bright red. (Had I fallen all the way off the train but landed on my feet, my legs would have had many folds in them and when I walked, each step would have sounded like an accordion.). Even though it would have been cool to be the only kid in school with a pancake foot (knowing full well that I could make it pop back to the original shape by sticking my thumb in my mouth and blowing) I decided to fix the situation. No panic, no yelling, perfectly calm,,,I simply lifted my foot out of the gap. It came out as simply as it went in.
Here's the part that should have made me scream, faint, or at least tell someone. Just as the bottom of my foot cleared the top of the coupler, the train pulled, the cars lurched, and the gap closed with a deafening clang! I stepped up onto the next car and caught up with my dad who was none the wiser. As I stepped into the forward car, I noticed two teenage workers on the small platforms on the ends of each of the cars. The one yelled over the noise of the train, "Did you see that kid!?!"
So here I am. "That kid", with an un-pancake-like foot. Riding trains with no fear, stepping between cars willy nilly like there was possibility of getting my foot caught in the couplers (because there isn't...now) with no lasting ill effect whatsoever. I've always known that God had sent a guardian angel to watch over me. I have suspicions as to why...I may write about one day, but not yet. I'm pretty sure it is probably not so I could write a story that takes four thousand times longer to read than the actual event. I know there are some people who might say that it wasn't true, possibly because I tend to get injured/sick more often than the average Hollywood stuntman...but I like to instead think, how much more likely I would be to fall down if I didn't have someone watching over me...especially with a pancake foot.
And don't worry...I will definitely probably write more about our European vacation next time.
Great story-telling! Thanks Jeff.
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