Hey! I went to Texas for the weekend for ties-that-bind reasons, and the only good pictures (at least, the kind that I can share here) that I got on the trip were pictures that I got in Louisiana on the return trip.
Yeah, I re-entered Louisiana fairly early this morning.
I will share some thoughts since my last blog article before I get to today’s pictures.
Saturday, June 1st
I was working late last night with inviting people to like the Facebook page. For some reason, it allowed me to do more than a month’s worth of posts, without blocking me, which is amazing. I went from mid-April links all the way until a few days ago with the inviting.
I see that I am fetishizing my old self, and I see why I am doing it, looking back at 15 years ago and all of the signs that there was no way that I could keep up the good things that I was doing then, no way.
Even though going to the gym would be a good idea, I also kind of need to hang tight at the house today.
There was some insight that I had yesterday that I wanted to mention; oh, yes, it’s this kind of duality of me being an intense person, like I keep thinking of a student saying that I was one of the teachers who cared, and I was thinking about how during the prime part of my teaching career, at least before burnout, I was described by people, including colleagues, as intense, and I was thinking yesterday about how I had to become more chill and had to pull back into my head but that I am still intense, I still have this intensity in me that has nowhere to go, no way to manifest itself, like I hear awesome songs, by like Seether and such.
I feel that intensity. I feel that passion. I remember Mae saying that I have passion, and, yet, nobody sees my passion anymore. Well, the people who most see it see it on the internet, but, in either case, I feel like I can’t show that to people who are around me in person. I am not here.
Hey, rabbit!
I want to be a cycle breaker, but the cycle prevents me from even having an opportunity. Yeah.
I had intensity. I had respect. I think every day about that time of my life.
I was thinking about those spring 2010 classes and how I must have been thinking about them plenty even shortly after them, because, even shortly after them, I was kind of missing my old self, just going nowhere by working at the newspaper, going nowhere by going back to school.
Thursday, June 6th
I really want to go work out, man. I want to lift weights, but I don’t want to go to the gym to do it. I would much rather go to the Wellness Center.
I suddenly started thinking about my Memphis, Sunbelt & San Diego railroad last night for the first time in a while. I don’t think that I have time before I die to get that accomplished. How do people do things, man? How do people do things?
I am also thinking about chasing the CP 2816 eastward from Beaumont, which would be on the 17th. That would be nice. That might allow me to get the Port Rail Lake Charles train before that. That would be cool to get the Port Rail train, the CP 2816, and the westbound Amtrak Sunset Limited on the same day, and maybe get a Union Pacific Railroad train, a BNSF Railway train in the same day, five railroads, and maybe even get a regular CPKC train in there, too. I don’t know what a hat trick is called when it’s of five things.
Saturday, June 8th
We left the house in the morning, briefly stopped in Lake Charles, and stopped in Beaumont for a couple of things, including a hellish sensory-overload experience at the Cracker Barrel. It was so damn loud in that place, and, because it was so hot outside, there was no place to hide from all of this. It was an awful experience.
In downtown Beaumont, we saw a northbound CPKC train of tank cars with XOMX reporting marks and “1202” placards and two TFM gondolas on the rear of the train.
The event that we attended this evening was very good, a lovely service, a lovely event.
Then, we went to the house afterward. I was still dressed in my shirt and tie, but it was so uncomfortable, I asked the man if I could borrow a swimsuit. I then jumped in the swimming pool with the kids. It was my first time being in that pool. It was a good experience. I got to play with some of those kids. They got to know me. Those kids started climbing me. That was interesting.
Someone asked me yesterday, just seeing me sitting in the pew, not even seeing me standing up, if I lost weight. So, it’s apparently apparent that I have lost weight, even when you view me sitting down in a church pew while wearing a buttoned-down shirt and tie.
Yeah, I had not seen him in a long time, probably not in 2024. That was good. He asked me how I did it. I told him fasting. He said that he has done that before.
So, that was nice. The priest was interesting, was reading some C S Lewis stuff. So, that was interesting.
Sunday, June 9th
I was pacing around inside of the shade and the air conditioning of the closed kitchen of the Days Inn on Huffmeister Road in Houston, Texas, the only walk that I took on this trip.
This has been an interesting experience, but kind of hellish with the heat, the noise, and the brightness.
I hate saying that I am looking forward to getting back to the house, but sleeping and being as I am on this trip is rough, and I am looking forward to the drive back, where, maybe, we can do some other things.
Monday, June 10th – Today
When my 04:00 alarm clock rang, I was outside in the parking lot of the hotel, loading the automobile.
I had been awake since about 03:00.
I wish that I could sleep better.
At around or just after 07:45, we entered Louisiana.
I don’t think that I had been to this rest center before.
I wanted to keep going.
About an hour later, after stopping at a cousin’s house to temporarily discharge my passengers, I am at the Port Of Lake Charles.
Actually, I am the passenger.
Damn, it’s hot out here.
So, the job had to back around the port to grab some centerbeam flatcars, which is why 17 minutes transpired between the prior image and this next image.
Now, our train is departing.
Okay, but what is with all of those empty centerbeam cars, though?
That’s plenty of cars to be rejected due to defects at once, and I don’t think that the port is getting inbound railroad loads on centerbeam flatcars, is it?
Next, I am at Lake Street.
The train has 15 cars.
The first seven cars are hopper cars. The rest of the cars are centerbeam flatcars, but, strangely, only the first one is loaded. The rest are empty.
Notice that I am shooting all of these pictures of this train from the northern side of the track.
It’s unusual for me to shoot from the northern side of the track here, especially when it is sunny.
That’s because it’s unusual for me to be photographing this train during warm-weather times, which is when the sun is farther north in the sky.
So, I will try to get ahead of this train one time. I was sure that I would not be able to get ahead of it and back on the north side of the track before Ryan Street, which is really to say, before Enterprise. So, I figured that I would just be shooting it probably one more time at one of those numbered avenues where the track is on an angle compared to the roads that it is crossing, where the track is on the angle.
Well, here I am at Ryan Street, getting a few cellular-telephone-camera images.
The van is having air-conditioner issues.
FDDM 200647 is the second-to-last car, an empty blue centerbeam flatcar, of the train. The one loaded centerbeam car has Mercer Timber products. The first car is an NDYX three-bay hopper car that is formerly Norfolk Southern and with a build date of 12 95. The rest of the hopper cars are two-bay SOIX hopper cars.
This is a strange train. So.
Yeah, I am going to get one more shot of this thing, and I will not even try to chase the westbound return trip, because it is too sunny and too hot. I will return to our cousin’s house to visit with her, which will be nice and lovely.
That water that I drank good.
I guess that no one will be at the office this morning; it’s not a good day for me to try to bug in and try to get anything.
Okay, nobody is at the office. Dammit.
The light is just a tad bit north of due east; that’s why I needed to get past the curve in the track at Louisiana Avenue. The light at Enterprise Boulevard stayed green as I got to it, as did the Third Avenue light. I turned down Fourth to cross the track and take a peek. The sun was dipping behind a cloud. So, I took Tulip Street to go east some more. The light quickly came back out; so, maybe I jacked myself by doing that.
This wouldn’t be a bad place to live; this wouldn’t be a good place to live, either.
Okay, 5th Avenue is where I made my final stand here. There was no place to pull off in the van, but I will try to pull off anyway.
I did it!
That’s good. I like it.
It’s different than what I usually get when I take pictures here, because, usually when I take pictures of an eastbound train here, it’s from the other side of the track.
Because the Union Pacific Railroad has this weird practice of leaving its locomotive parked right on the branch mainline, even though there are stub tracks right next to the UP office on Gerstner Memorial Drive right next those tracks, I was able to get one more shot, of the train stopped behind the obstructing locomotive.
As I was leaving, it looked as though one of the Port Rail trainmen was going into the UP office, I guess to talk about the damn UP locomotive blocking the way.
At 09:30, I was driving away, with this nice little chase concluded. I still had eaten nothing but two Quest bars and a banana this morning. I took a shower early this morning at the hotel in Houston; now, after this chase, I need another one.
This was the first time that I photographed either Port Rail action or Acadiana Railway action in 2024. So, yeah, that’s interesting.
I really have to send this lens in for repairs.
Damn, it’s hot.
We headed east.
That’s all for the pictures for today. As soon as we got back here, as soon as I finished unloading the van, I mowed the back yard.
It was 10 years ago this afternoon that I photographed Monica Hernandez doing a segment in front of an NOGC train, back when I still was kind of a New Orleans man, kind of; I was frontin’.
Also, 20 years ago today, I was at Gran Plaza in Monterrey, and, right now, the CP 2816 is in Mexico, probably around Mexico City. It’s supposed to come back north now behind the diesel-electric locomotives due to precautions after that fatal incident, which I think is kind of sad, kind of mars the whole thing. A woman got too close to the track and got hit as the train was passing.
The end of this trip was kind of weird, because we left Houston so early and got into Louisiana so early, that’s sort of against my style of optimizing a travel day, but it helped me get done a bunch of stuff over here that I needed to do, like getting back on the right food regiment.
With all of that construction by the port, I was worried that I was going to get talked to by some cops or construction workers. Neither happened. The train passed, and I got out of there.
I have no home, not anymore.
That’s all for now.
Jim
