This Monkey goes North for the Summer

        The train now chugs north bound up the West Coast.... traveling parallel to highway 5... but the journey was made  unique by this am-track train's trek thru the plethora of CA's various terrain.  John Steinbeck's stories coursed thru my imagination as I recalled how wonderfully genius he was in his description of this landscape.  Greggers and I were now part of the majority of the passengers aboard... no more smoking cart available... and this was 1998! These were the beginnings I believe of all their retarded anti-smoking laws. (I still have an unpaid ticket from when I did my East Coast wanderings a few years later. I was ticketed for smoking while waiting underground in the pits of those subway tunnels.... so I guess I have a warrant in one of the biggest cities on the planet.... lol... come and get me!)
         Greggers had gone to get some drinks for us and returned with a new friend, Jorge, a chicano from Fresno, who told us a wild story about how he just abandoned his car in the train station's parking lot.  He had a few ounces of that good CA chronic, and he told us he had his dealer front it and was bailing town on him with out paying him back. Sounded kinda of stupid for a little but of weed but we didn't care cause he smoked with us  generously and asked us a lot of crazy shit about cowboys and ranches like he had these particular queries on his mind for years. We just laughed at this stereotype shared by outsiders, never having been to TX.  I asked him if some racists questions that included mexican stereotypes, and with the continued laughter, and without a smoking cart available we began fogging out all the train bathrooms and  to every hidden spot we weren't allowed to be and we smoked and smoked. We just kept moving around every five minutes and found no trouble getting away with this formula. Jorge was headed for Seattle as well, and was a great new travel companion.