When I was a kid growing up I could hear the train out my bedroom window every evening and morning. I loved the sound of the distant train. When we moved to Ashland in 2000 I was happy to hear the sound of the train in the distance once again. However, we soon upgraded our windows to the double-pane variety which meant no more train sounds except in the summer when we left our windows open. Now we don’t even get that as the trains have stopped rolling through town for the past few years. I don’t know why but it has been a long time since a train came through Ashland.

As I was riding my bike over the overpass in town I saw a guy walking on the train tracks playing (or pretending to anyway) an electric flying V guitar. I quickly stopped and pulled out my camera. However, I hadn’t reloaded my SD card and by the time I did so he was already under me. So I was left with the above view of empty tracks instead. No train, no guitarist. No one is even on the bike path that runs along the tracks on the left side of this photograph.

The way my camera is pointing leads to Medford, Oregon (followed by Eugene, Portland, Seattle, etc.). The way the guitarist was walking is California, which if he followed the tracks he would have ended up in about 15 miles later.

Posted on May 8th, 2009 under only in ashland, places • Tags: spring, trains, valley. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed