• It’s not so bad this time. Long, but okay. I can keep occupied with the laptop and games and such. Ryan’s been playing his Nintendo DS even before the train got moving. I took out the laptop and played Fate for a while; finally I’m a level 9…took long enough. When that got boring, I listened to iTunes for a bit and I played some Blasterball. He’s still playing that game… I would have thought he’d be testing out the new phone he got for his birthday yesterday. His actual birthday isn’t until the 19th.
    Every now and then I look out the window. Lots of fields. It gets more exciting as we get closer downtown. You can see all the people enjoying themselves as they walk around in the parks and on the sidewalks…the occasional tourist looks up at a skyscraper and takes a few shots. Cute. Then there are the busybodies rushing down the road 10 miles above the speed limit. Those are the people who deserve to catch every red light.
    I read a story I had written about a year ago at a friend’s house on my laptop. I changed a few words here and there. This works too, though. I just write down my thoughts. There’s a farmhouse outside the window. Now I just see trees flying by. Yawn. I bet this is REAL fun to read. I can see a tiny red barn out in the field. The paint has worn thin from years of the hard rain and snow they get in this area. We just passed through a tiny town. I saw buildings and a few signs, but I don’t have any idea where we are. I’ll look harder next time. My best guess would be Gilman, but that’s because we just stopped in a town and I see a sign that says ‘Gilman Truck Stop’ or something. And we’re going again. This is really dull. I take pity on you. If you want to stop reading, you can, and probably should. Really.
    Ooooh! A bird! The first sign of life outside our car! Exciting. We must be getting close to civilization. Or not. That was about 10 minutes ago. Still nothing. Kidding. Another town…Ashkum. I’ve never heard of it before. And judging by the squiggly red line underneath it neither has the computer. This entire area looks like another extension of Massac County. It’s all the same!!! We just passed under an interstate or highway bridge. And another town, possibly named Clifton. The water tower was blank, so I picked the name from a deli we passed. Also possibly Knapp. That was the name of the funeral home. There was also a lovely house with a lovely backyard full of lovely flowers. Lovely. That could be a cute little rural town name. I wonder what antidisestablishmentarianism is. It’s probably a waste of letters.
    There was a broken tree outside my window. I wonder if it was struck by lightning…that’s awfully close to the tracks. I’d be freaking out if there was a storm while we were out here in the middle of nowhere. I doubt there’s a scarecrow taller than this train. Now we’re passing through a train yard. We’re either slowing down to switch tracks or pick people up. More likely the first. I can see a water tower in the distance that says Kankakee, but we’re picking up speed again. I’ll never understand. The engineer just told us that we’re stopping there next. That and the café car is closing. There’s a Wal-Mart billboard with a strawberry on it. Fun. I can see a fountain in a square, and at least one church, the other building could be one, but it resembles a mini state capital. There’s a NAPA. A bunch of gangstas who hopped off the train for a smoke break and back on again to get to Chicago, I assume. The only stop between here and there is Homewood, I think. That’s where our grandparents live. We saw them last weekend. Michael went swimming with us. It was fun. Ryan’s still playing that game. The grave underneath these tracks is more yellow-brown than the typical charcoal gray. We’re passing close to a freighter. It’s so big this close…I wonder what’s in the tanks? Lots of trucks in a parking lot down the hill, some old vans and buses too. Another town…passing through the run-down sect. All these old, unused buildings…DAVID BRADLEY FARM IMP (imports?) Big old building…Bill Ding…that’s the name of the construction worker on Lego Island 2. Funny. More fields. Sigh. And a plant of some sort. No idea what they make there. I couldn’t find a sign. Looking back, I can’t believe how much I’ve typed. It’s really helped the time to go faster.
    We just passed a metal scrap yard full of old buses, cars, ladders, you name it. I even saw a big old van painted up like the mystery machine with 62, 67, or 68 painted on it. So. Cool. We passed a Kohl’s too, but the van was so much cooler. I actually saw a van like that before driving down the road. It had ‘the Mystery machine’ painted on the side. So. Cool. But now of course we’re back to the fields. Including this sentence, I’ve typed 908 words. Wow. Feels like more. A lot more. I’ve been up since about 5:30 this morning. I’m not gonna last long at the house. But then again, I’ve shocked and surprised myself before. I might make it longer than I think. Cars on the road drivng next to us have road work to deal with. We’re lucky we rarely have inter-train traffic. Sometimes there’s only one track and 2 trains going in opposite directions need to pass one another. So the train that can waits on a small piece of tack for the other to pass. That seems to be us a lot us a lot of the time, but not recently. Well another 15 minutes of fields…this was entertaining for about an hour anyway.
    ~aang v fan~