Mr. Five Forty-1 is a skater and graffiti writer who rides trains with a mission.

It was my first ever train trip. I was trying to hop out to Portland, Oregon. The goal was to skate the Burnside skatepark and to skate all the DIYs up the coast. I didn’t know what I was doing that first ride. I rode “suicide” in an open-bottom car for 20 hours. Made it to California, luckily. I was trying to do the coastline. My buddy took me on a squatting adventure, sleeping in a minivan in bougie Thousand Oaks. Then I went to Oxnard. It’s a hellhole industrial town on the beach. It had a sick little yard, so small, and the local engine was covered in paint. So many bums, so much human shit. It was gnarly.

By the coast, it’s getting chilly. I just had a blanket my homie gave me. There’s an open boxcar, so I decided to sleep in it. I woke up in the morning moving. I was like, “Hell yeah.” I’m expecting them to build a train. That didn’t happen. We just ended up going in reverse down to the industrial zone. I’m looking on the map, hoping we’re switching back. Nope. I was thinking of jumping off, but it was a consistent 20 miles per hour, a little too fast for me. I had a bigass backpack and my skateboard, so much shit. We ended up cruising right into a goddamn recycling yard. They load the boxcars with pallet squares of trash. It was so gross. I realized I was sleeping in a stinky boxcar.

Now they’re checking the train. The conductor stuck his head in and popped it out real quick. I was like, “Oh, geez.”  All of a sudden, they banged on the train so loud with a wrench. They’re like, “Wake up! Get out!” I pull my stuff out. I’m like, “I’m sorry.” And they’re like, “Exit’s that way.” I hurried my ass out of there.

That train took me six miles away from the hopout spot. I walked with my 40-pound bag, too much stuff. Before I went back to the yard, I had to go through this homeless center. I’m walking by all these bums, I think they’re looking at me because I’m carrying my weight, showing off. I talked to one dude, trying to learn about the trains. He’s like, “Hey man, they got a nice shower in there, free food. You just gotta sign in and you’re good.” I was like, “No man, I’m alright. I like it dirty.”

I made it to the yard, put my shit down, and looked at my phone. I saw the reflection of my face and realized why the bum was so nice to me. I was eaten alive by a freaking mosquito or ants in that boxcar. My whole face was red dots. It looked insane. My eyeballs, the tip of my nose were bad, my lips, it was everywhere! I looked so rough, the bum was like, “You need help.”

A train pulled up, I was stoked. I hop in an open boxcar near the end. And then, shit-you-not, the fool cut the line in half and left me behind. They only take 15 cars at a time, it was a really short local line. So I gave up and took a goddamn Amtrak bus to San Francisco.

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Masthead

Editor-in-chief — Andrew Fedorov

Rails Editor — Connor McFarland

Altitude Editor — Matt Gu

Deputy Rails Editor — Connor Noble