July 8
I felt like I'd been put in a barrel and rolled down a hill. Waking up wasn't fun at all, and getting out of the papasan wasn't fun either.
Meghan looked like she was a little stiff, too; when she got up she flexed her shoulders and then twisted around her back a couple of times, while I was stretching out my wings. And then we both looked at each other and shared a laugh.
My coat was all matted down from sleeping on it and my feathers were kind of a mess, too. There hadn't been enough room in the cab of Mel's truck to preen them right.
We decided that since I had to go to the train station and Meghan's house was halfway there anyways we'd use her shower, and after she put her pants on, she helped pack my saddlebags with stuff I might want for the weekend, which wasn't really all that much. Mostly my flight clothes and my camelback (which could be folded up pretty small when it was empty) and radios and some cans of anchovies just in case. And she also put her bra in my saddlebags 'cause she said there wasn't any point in putting it back on just to take it off again once she got home.
So we walked over to her apartment and that helped work out some of the stiffness in my legs and belly, although my wing muscles were still pretty achey.
It was strange how I'd only had my bathmat for a couple of days but I already missed it when my hooves were slipping on her shower floor.
The shower worked really well to relax my muscles the rest of the way, and Meghan straightened out my feathers some while we were in the shower still, and then after we'd finished and I'd brushed her hair she had me sit down on the bed next to her and worked on my wings, and we both kind of lost track of time until she heard her doorbell ring and then looked at her telephone and realized that her ride to work had arrived.
Since she still wasn’t wearing any clothes, she had me go down and explain that she was running a little bit late. And I had just started to go back to the house when she came rushing past me, carrying her purse in one hand and a silver package of Pop Tarts in the other.
Meghan told me to have fun in Bay City, and said that she wished she could be there, too, and reminded me to make sure the door was locked when I left, and then she got in the car and it hurried out of her driveway.
Since I had a few hours before the train arrived, I went back upstairs and finished preening my wings, and then I left a note for Meghan saying that I was sorry I'd made her late and then I had a bowl of Shredded Wheat (I didn't think she'd mind) and got my saddlebags and made sure that the apartment was locked.
Even though it was early, I went down to the train station and waited around and then I went to McDonalds which was right next door and got a cup of coffee to help wake me up and then I waited some more.
I knew that the train would arrive just before eleven, but I had a while before that happened. So I people-watched a bit and I wished I had a book of poetry or my Bible to read, and I listened to the airplane radio for a little bit and it was nice to hear Dori's voice on the radio even if I wasn't flying myself.
The lobby filled up with some people and then the westbound train arrived and most of them got on it and then it left.
That meant that my train was getting close. I could picture it in my mind, rushing past the fields near Lawton and the grass airport outside Mattawan and underneath the 94 Highway and then under the 131 Highway and alongside Stadium Drive and Western Michigan and Kalamazoo College and then it would be at the train station. But picturing it in my mind didn't make it arrive any faster, and I went outside and flew up a little bit but with the curves in the tracks I couldn't see all that far.
I stayed out on the platform and kept an ear cocked in that direction, and after a little while I heard the distant wail of a train horn, and then it was hardly any time at all before I heard the bells at the crossing start to ring, and then the train screeched into the station and as soon as the conductor put down his little yellow step, I flew aboard and found a seat next to the window.
The first part of the trip was pretty familiar territory. We crossed over the river and then through the railroad yard and then went through Comstock and Galesburg and made a turn before Augusta and all the while I was picturing where we were from where I'd flown. But my flights hadn't gone beyond Battle Creek yet, so once we got into the city there it was much less familiar.
Dozens of little towns passed by after we left Battle Creek, and lots and lots of fields. It still amazed me how many fields there were. I'd never seen so many one right after the other.
The train slowed down as it got to Lansing, and we went alongside a river for a little bit then past lots of houses and a strange park, and then it slowed down for the East Lansing station. It was kind of strange that each time I rode the train I saw different things, 'cause I knew more about Earth.
Aquamarine and Jenny were waiting on the platform for me, and as soon as I'd gotten off the train Aquamarine came up and nuzzled me and then when we broke apart she asked me how I was doing and what I'd thought about the storms that came through last night.
Well, I told her about them on the way to Jenny's car (which was called Malibu) and she said that she was glad that she could keep her hooves on the ground inside a good, strong building, rather than be up in the air like I was. But I thought I'd rather be up there where I could see it and feel it, instead of not being sure what it was going to do next.
Jenny said that we might as well go right to Bay City, unless there was something I really wanted to do in Lansing. She said that the ships would start arriving tonight, and that she already had a hotel room for tonight and tomorrow that was near the festival.
I couldn't think of anything I really wanted to do in Lansing, so she drove through town until she got to the 127 Highway and followed it to the 69 Highway.
We talked some, but mostly Aquamarine and I watched out the windows. Towns were marked with green signs and blue signs said what there was in that town. Those were things I hadn't known when I'd first gotten to Earth. And there were orange signs to warn where people were working on the road.
I felt like I'd learned a lot from taking trips in cars.
When we got to a city called Flint, we went to the 75 Highway, and that took us north. When we came upon a really big bridge, Jenny said that we were getting close—the bridge was called the Zilwaukee Bridge, and it went over the Saginaw river. She said it was really tall because ships had to fit under it, and I thought about how big the ones I'd seen on my trip up north were.
I wanted to know why they hadn't just put in a drawbridge instead, and Jenny said she didn't know but she thought that they couldn't put drawbridges on highways, because cars didn't expect to have to stop.
I wished that they hadn't put up concrete barriers on either side of the road, because we were high enough that we could have seen a lot on either side of us. Jenny said that they were there to keep cars from falling off the edge, which made sense, but they could have been long tubes like on the Mackinac Bridge. Those let you see out to the side.
It wasn't too long after that we left the highway and went into town. Jenny had a little moving map on her dashboard that told her where to go, and it led her right to a big park along the river. Men in bright vests like mine had little wands and waved them at her to give her directions, and they led her right to a spot where she could put her car.
We left my saddlebags in the car, and went to a booth where we paid to get in. The woman there was giving out bands that went around people's' wrists, and me and Aquamarine gave her some trouble as she tried to figure out where to put our bands. Finally she decided that they'd go around a foreleg well enough, and so we got banded and then went in.
There were a bunch of little shops that had food set up in a row, and Jenny said that when we wanted fair food we'd have to stop there. And she warned us that fair food was deep-fried and overpriced. And as we walked to the front she pointed out a stage and a beer tent and also little light blue boxes that she said were portable toilets.
Along the riverfront was where the ships would be, although there were only a couple and one of them was on the other side of the river. I'd kind of had an idea how much bigger they'd be from the ships I'd seen before and while they weren't anywhere close to that size, they were still a lot larger than any pony ship had ever been.
We went over to it and the crew was happy to show us around, plus they were really excited to see a pair of ponies who were interested in their ship. It was called the Denis Sullivan, and they said that it was the flagship of Wisconsin.
Jenny had never been on a ship like it before, so she was really excited, and Aquamarine hadn't either, although she was kinda familiar with some parts of it, 'cause she said that she'd read a few novels about ships back in Equestria.
Most of it looked pretty familiar to me, but I realized as we got led belowdecks that I didn't know the human names for all of the parts. So I paid real close attention, and repeated the names to myself so that I'd remember them.
She had three masts, which were a foremast, a mainmast, and a mizzenmast, and she had a deeper than normal hull because she wasn't an exact copy of historical ships, and we were told that there was more headroom belowdecks because of it. And she also had a diesel motor which the old schooners hadn't had.
I asked if I could fly up and take a closer look at the masts and rigging, and our guide had to ask her boss, but I finally got permission and so I flew off the deck and took a look around the topsides of the ship.
There were ropes everywhere, holding the masts up or holding the booms and sails in place, and it was kind of a nightmare to navigate, although I knew a few pegasuses who could do it in their sleep. Most of the ocean-going ships had one or two pegasuses on their crew for lookouts and minor weather control and emergency repairs. But it was hard to imagine what it would be like to be flying around the spiderweb of ropes with the ship pitching and rolling in a storm, trying to fix a sail that had gone wrong.
From where I was, I could see another set of sails downriver, so when I was done having a look around, I flew down and told everyone what I'd seen.
We went all the way to the poop deck which was the best place to watch from aside from being up a mast or flying, and pretty soon the drawbridge over the river went up and then we could see her clearly. She was slightly smaller and only had two masts, and I didn't really notice until she got close, but they were really raked back.
That was the Pride of Baltimore II, and she took her place across the river from us.
We spent the rest of the evening watching the ships come in, until both sides of the harbor were lines with sailing ships and I all of a sudden felt really homesick. Even though they were bigger than any of the ships I'd ever seen in Equestria, watching them come up the river and cast their lines ashore was just like being home again, and it didn't take much for my mind to see ponies loading and unloading cargo, or for the memory of the smell of sea air to come back to me.
Jenny was right about the food booths, but we had a snack at them anyways. And we both insisted on visiting the beer tent, and we got beers called Landshark which were pretty good.
When it started to get dark, we got back in her car and drove to a hotel called Euclid, which was like a long house instead of having lots of floors for rooms like the other hotels I'd stayed in.
We let her choose which bed she wanted, and then Aquamarine and I took the other one. I was still a bit tired from last night, so I sort of dozed against Aquamarine's side while she and Jenny talked, then finally Aquamarine shook me awake enough to lie down under the covers with her.