July 22
I was kinda eager to leave, so I woke up a little early and by the time Meghan's alarm went off I was ready to get out of bed, and I would have except she started rubbing my belly and then moved her hand towards my tail and then I decided it would be okay to stay in bed a little while longer.
Since I wasn't going to have time to do it later, I joined her in the shower, and we had to hurry a little bit 'cause we'd spent more time than we should have in bed, but it was worth it.
We took turns brushing each other, then went downstairs for a quick breakfast, and she'd just finished the dishes when I heard her friend pull into the driveway.
Meghan kissed me and told me to have a good trip and said to call her when I got back, and I said that I would, then we kissed again and had to hurry out of the house so her friend didn't get mad.
The westbound Amtrak left earlier than the eastbound did, but I still had a little bit of time before the train arrived, so I didn't hurry right over to the train station. I had a nice, leisurely flight around downtown Kalamazoo instead, and then I went and played in a big park that was near the train station for a little bit. There was a pond that the creek went into, and then it disappeared underground at the other end, and there was a big grate to keep people out.
The ducks that were on the pond fit right through the grating, though, and they'd swim in and out of it, so I guess it didn't bother them any.
There was also a store called the Kalamazoo Beer Exchange, and if it had been open I would have bought some beer for Aric, but there wouldn't be enough time before my train arrived.
I was close enough to the station that I probably could have waited until I heard the train before I went back, but I risked missing it and there wasn't another train until tomorrow, so I went and got a cup of coffee from McDonald's and then sat outside on the benches and waited for it to arrive.
About ten minutes before it was supposed to arrive, a few other passengers started walking outside and sitting on the the benches or standing along the tracks to look for it, but I kept sitting until I heard it off in the distance, then I went up and stood by the yellow line, too.
There weren't a whole lot of people on the train, and so I could pick whatever seat I wanted. I'd always liked to pick the side that was next to Kalamazoo College, so I thought I'd do something different and pick the opposite side, which would give me a view that was mostly south.
I could keep good track of where we were until we got outside of Kalamazoo, and then it got a little bit trickier. The train went so quick, I was still puzzling over landmarks that were familiar enough from the air, and then they were gone. I think if I'd been able to look out the front of the train, it would have been easier, but I could only see things as they blurred past.
I was pretty sure that I saw the spot where the train went under the 94 Highway—the spot where I'd been watching it and nearly run into wires—'cause I couldn't remember any other places where there were two bridges side-by-side like that.
We raced through the countryside, and even though I'd been this way before on the train it looked a little bit different being on the other side.
I would have liked for the whole trip to be this fast, but the train got into a busy area and had to slow down, and just like on my last trip, there were lots of tracks on both sides with all sorts of trains on them. It was still hard to figure out what so many trains could be carrying.
After that it was nothing but houses and buildings and roads with occasional trees, and we mostly plodded along. Most of the time the cars on the highway that were right next to the tracks were faster than us, but then I saw a bunch of them slowing down and stopping, and then we went past a toll gate and got ahead again.
When the train finally stopped in the station it was nice to know that the first half of my journey was over. It had been nicer to be here with Aquamarine and Miss Parker and Mister Barrow, and I remembered how I'd been anticipating the rest of the trip and meeting up with Aquamarine and Gusty.
There wasn't anypony to meet up with this time, though. And I had five hours of free time before the next train arrived.
Well, I thought that the first thing I ought to do was have lunch, and then I thought I'd go out to the waterfront and walk around, and maybe visit a museum. So I ate at one of the snack kiosks which was called Au Bon Pain and had a hot vegetarian wrap, and then I went outside and the Willis Tower was right there and I thought about flying up to the top, just for fun. I wasn't sure that I was allowed to, although I thought that if I stayed close to it, I wouldn't have to worry about airplanes, and surely they weren't allowed to fly lower than the skyscratchers, anyway, or else they might bump into one.
If I'd been smarter, I would have done that before I had lunch, and maybe while not wearing my saddlebags, but I did it anyway, climbing up around the building in a tight helix. There were lots of offices inside, and there must have been people who noticed me, but I didn't stick in any one place long enough to be sure.
The air currents around the building were kind of tricky, especially as I got higher. There were lots of eddies and cross-currents, and I had to pay attention to avoid crashing into it by mistake.
I got up to the observation floor, which had the little glass boxes that stuck out, and I looped around that twice just so that everyone who didn't notice me on the first lap got a second chance, and then I headed down for the shore.
Cayenne had said that it was all pretty in the summer, and she was right. There was a big stretch of park with little walking paths and fountains and flowers, and I walked around it, thinking how strange it was that on one side there was a really big city, with tall skyscratchers and stretching so far that it took the train almost two hours to get from one end of it to the other, and on the other there was a big, open lake, and here in the middle was a nice park for everyone to enjoy.
I bet it was really pretty to sit in the park and watch the sun rise over the lake.
When I started getting hungry for dinner, I knew it was time to go back to the train station, and this time I didn't fly too high. The Willis Tower was a really good landmark, so I flew right to it and then the train station.
Their clock said that it was still an hour before my train left, so I went back to Au Bon Pain and had another vegetarian wrap, 'cause the first one had been so good.
When I went back down to the train shed, there wasn't an Amtrak waiting on my platform, but instead a brown and orange train called Iowa Pacific, and I asked the conductor if this was the train I was supposed to be on or if there was an Amtrak coming after he left.
He said that this was my train, and that I could get aboard if I wanted.
The inside was nicer than the Amtrak, and it had a car with a big glass dome, like the trains we'd taken out west, and I wanted to sit there but that was the dining car and I wasn't allowed to.
I wish I'd known that it had a dining car, 'cause I wouldn't have had dinner at the train station if I'd known.
I picked a seat on the lake side of the train in the hopes of getting a better view than just a highway.
Well, it wasn't really any better until we left Chicago, then it turned into fields and trees. This train didn't run as fast as the Amtrak did in Michigan.
I discovered that some of Indiana is very, very flat, which I guess makes it perfect for big fields, and there were a lot of them. The corn was high enough that sometimes all I could see out the window was cornstalks.
We passed by a big collection of silver silos—I'd seen some like them on farms before, but never a big collection all in one place like this. I figured it must be a place where the crop is stored before putting it onto a train.
Towards dusk, it started to get hillier, and I saw out the windows on the other side that there was a road that ran next to the track, and that was kind of neat because while the tracks went straight and level, the road went up and down, so sometimes the cars were a little above us and sometimes they were parallel and sometimes we were looking down on them.
The train started slowing down as we crossed a river, and pretty soon we arrived at the train station, which was in a river valley.
I looked at the directions that Aric had given me and they were pretty easy to follow. Right outside was Main Street, and I was supposed to follow that until I got to Kossuth Street, which was right after a zoo and baseball field.
I wasn't sure what a zoo would look like—I suppose it would have lots of different animals in it—but I knew what baseball fields looked like, so I flew up until I was clear of all the wires than ran overhead and started following Main Street away from the river.
The baseball field was really easy to spot, and he'd said that there were a couple of streets that didn't quite line up in an intersection and that the next one after that was Kossuth Street, and I'd turn east there, and then it was right on the corner of 28th Street.
It didn't take me very long to find. It was on a pretty big lot, with a square garage in the back and a big porch in front. I rang the doorbell, but all the lights were off so I didn't think anybody would answer, and no one did.
Just like he'd promised, the key was under the doormat, and I put it back after I let myself in.
My first stop after dropping my saddlebags was the bathroom, which took me a minute to find, and I might not have if the door hadn't been open.
I didn't want to go poking around, 'cause I knew that there were other people living there, too, but I couldn’t help but sniff around a little bit and try and get a sense of his house-mates. I thought about the picture he’d sent me and tried to guess who was who.
It didn't look like there were enough rooms upstairs for everyone who was living in the house, but then David and Angela lived in the basement at Aric's, so there were probably basement rooms in this house, too.
I sat at his desk long enough to write in my journal, and I kind of wanted to stay up until he got home, but I was pretty tired. So I got in his bed and it smelled just like him, and I curled up on the pillow and closed my eyes and even though the house was in a place where I'd never been before, my nose told me that it was familiar, and it didn't take too long to fall asleep.
What desires lie in the dreams of man.
The nose, knows.
At least Silver managed to get where she was going in the same day. Unlike whats happened to me a couple times just doing 120 miles in the UK.
Has she been on the Rockie Mountain Observation Car yet? I forgot if she went to California to Oregon.
There was also a store called the Kalamazoo Beer Exchange, and if I had been open -- it had been open
thinking how strange it was that one one side -- on one side
Oh, and Lafayette and Kalamazoo are both in the Eastern time zone. Chicago is in the Central time zone.
Surprise, Aric! There's a pony in your bed, wat do?
7587948
Pet her, of course.
7588009 Is that how these young people are calling it these days, petting?
"Had" to look up the actual speed on the train line beetween Kalamazoo and Chicago. Both Wolverine and Bluewater would be at a max speed around 180km/h (110 mph) wich would feel very disorianting for Silver with the number we've run so far in the comment section as to what her speed could be.
Caution: Bored pegasi may shift in transit. Said shifting may encompass a major metropolitan area.
Must be an exceptionally clean and under-used bathroom if she couldn't just smell it out as soon as she entered the house if the door was open, what with all the soaps, water, molds, and ... other things.
Wonder if she remembered to tell her handlers that she was going to visit him.
7587919
Indiana didn't used to use Daylight Saving Time, and I forgot that now they do.
7588099 Even if we were in the past, when (most of) Indiana didn't observe Daylight Savings Time, Kalamazoo and Lafayette would still both be in the Eastern time zone. It's just one was on Eastern Daylight Time and the other Eastern Standard Time.
Silver Glow probably wouldn't understand that, of course.
That sounded like a great trip. I sure hope Silver doesn't get in trouble for buzzing the Willis Tower.
7588024
"I was just petting my pony, Mom, honest!"
7588114
Yeah, you're right. I'd just made the assumption when I was younger, since I only ever went to Indiana in the summertime, and it was an hour behind Michigan time ... ah well.
I'll make corrections when I get home from work.
7588009 7588024
To start with, yes.
You know Silver you would be AMAZED how embarrassing it is to explain how you broke the bed.
As to not knowing where the bathroom is. That is because girlfriends clean it. If it was just guys, you would know where it was for the same reason people know where cess pools are. It would make its presence felt.
Just call Silver "Goldilocks'. Someone has been sleeping in my bed.
7588411
smelt?
7588386 I've got my bet on "trying to join pony in bed and cuddle without waking pony."
7588411
It's not just the nasty stuff that smells in a bathroom, there's soaps, shampoos, lotions, deodorant bars, toothpastes, medicines, cleaning supplies, a lot of water and general humidity, and mold created by it. You don't need to be a pony to know you're in a bathroom by smell alone while wearing a blindfold, you can even tell some took a shower in it for hours after they got out (a pony might be able to tell who).
Every bathroom in every house or hotel I've been in has one of three smells, clean bathroom, bathroom that needs to be cleaned and bathroom that was recently cleaned.
You could easily mistake the smell of a kitchen that is never used with a living room, but not a bathroom, if only because there's at least one big bowl of water constantly filled waiting to be used.
Jumps on google maps, spends ten minutes wandering around Lafayette, Louisiana, thinking Biscuits is taking the piss with his directions, before realising I'm in the wrong state.
It turns out (according to wikipedia) that, generally speaking, there are many Lafayettes.
Poor kid, when she goes back to Equestria, no one's going to care that there's a pegasus flying around.
Well that would make a boring day at work interesting if a Pegasus suddenly smacks against the window and then slowly slips down before catching the wind again.
it had been open
7589122
Maybe she was feeling a little close minded that day.
7589179
Nah, if that were the case, she'd make some casually tribalist remarks about unicorns when the subject of Cayenne and Gusty came up.
7589274
I suppose Aric and Meghan both have experience with manually operating a pegasus, hurr hurr.
7589274
3d tractor engine on top configuration.
pre15.deviantart.net/8090/th/pre/f/2012/027/7/1/fluttershy_carrying_rainbow_dash_vector_by_scrimpeh-d4ns7pa.png
7589274
@Admiral Biscuit
Seeing as Silver has become a meteorologist, has shown abilities with controlling tornadoes, and lives in Tornado Alley, may I request a chapter where there is a tornado and we see what she does? :3
Typo alert
7589414 Oh wow that is crazy. That reminds me of a video on YT about a tornado that threw tractor trailers like they were toys.
7589414 Oh yeah that also reminds me of the planes that blow people over at Princess Juliana International Airport off of Runway 10. Maho Beach is right behind the takoff point and people stand at the fence to be blown over as planes prepare for takeoff.
7589503 You are my new hero. That comic was hilarious!
Its adorable that his scent calms her.
7589634
I think it's just fine that SG (or in fact, most ponies that don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen) can't cook.
Cooking in Equestria is not the same as cooking on Earth, (at least not in the more rural setting of the OPP fics, and we know in canon that AJ still has a wood fired stove with bellows in her kitchen, for example). Heck, cooking was pretty much the exclusive domain of housewives and professional cooks 100 years ago. Everyone else was at the most was able to put meat on a stick over a fire or in a boiling pot of water.
This era where everyone can cook as a hobby and it can be portrayed as a fun thing to do on TV is very new, back then cooking was very time consuming and often exhausting, that's why households had servants what were there exclusively to cook.
There was very little control on temperature, wood heats up to different degrees depending on the type of wood and how dry it is. With bellows you can get a stove very hot, but it takes a long time for it to cool back down, and touching any part of it can burn you.
These days smoking burned meals are almost a TV cliche you don't really see very much of in real life (even if you don't know how to cook at most you overcook something) , but back then it was an everyday occurrence.
People who cooked picked their menu for the day based on what was available in the market, within their budget, that day, not on what they wanted to cook, so they had to know their recipes pretty well.
A baker's main skill was the ability to stand next to the oven for hours and keeping the temperature as constant as possible just by how it felt on his skin and by keeping track of the time in his head.
Put a modern bakers/chefs 100 years in the past and they would be reduced to apprentices.
7589656 Oh yes I've seen a few of those videos and they are hilariously awesome!
7588114 You're implying that there are people who do understand daylight savings time?
7589323
No need to state the obvious, duh!
7589746 That's it, Texas sucks.
7589803
While i do think he probably saw it coming, I don't think he really expected it, considering how active they usually were, and the others only told her it was OK after SG told them she literally meant sharing a bed to fall asleep on, after all, ponies are cute and innocent and like to snuggle and are in no way sexual.
Any misunderstanding is just due to a small difference in how they define a few key words:
English.
sleeping
1. rest by sleeping; be asleep.
2. have sexual intercourse or be involved in a sexual relationship.
friend
1. a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.
Equestrian.
sleeping
1. rest by sleeping; be asleep.
friend
2.a pony whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of family relations.
SG: "I'm sleeping with my friend Meghan"
Everyone: "Wait, did you say sleeping?"
SG: "Yes, sleeping, as in:
sleeping
1. rest by sleeping; be asleep."
Everyone:"Oh! OK, that's cool"
SG:"Yay!"
7589463 I don't have that option; I'm stuck with Wal-Mart. It's pretty much the only option around here since the local K-Mart closed back in March.
Well, if you are looking at weird curses, here in the USA, we often insult people by comparing them to various animals. You are doubtless familiar with the current ones, but a few old ones.
Skunk. Jerk, more or less
Wolf used to mean a womaniser (which, comparing sex lives of humans and wolves is kind of ironic)
Fresh fish for a noob (and potential victim of a swindle)
Also, Old West phrase "slack twisted idiot" (AFAIK this refers to getting your lasso tangled when trying to rope something)
Landlubber for seagoing folks is a classic
7589585
literally all they need is a modem, a router, and some Ethernet cables. The school has internet, it's just not good. But they get a pass for that, it's in the country and it's hard to get good internet. I wasn't exactly impressed with my school district.
This is one of the reasons I'll probably move from California. I like cool, wet climates and I grew up in a really dry area that regularly hits 100 Fahrenheit in the summer. Not to mention there's just so little rain. Two years ago it rained twice and it was pretty mild. There were winters when I was growing up where it'd sprinkle once the entire winter.
Magistatic would be behaving similar to electricity (which turns out to be super powerful, you can start recreating some semi modern tech that way) it's be an accumulation of magical charge similar to how in electrostatic you accumulate electrical charge. If you put magic on the electromagnetic spectrum, it'd be light and I don't think you can do much with that although I could be wrong. Plus you have the whole speed of light delay. It'd take 8 minutes for Celestia to raise the sun. Personally I keep switching between hiding magic in quantum mechanics (for example teleportation is manipulating the probability amplitude wave of an object) or adding it as a 5th fundamental force (so it'd be gravity, electromagnetic force, weak force, strong force, and magic (thaumic?) force). But regardless I don't know enough to actually go anywhere with either idea. That could be how lighting is mitigated. Although I'm still not a fan of calling it "pegasus magic" unless you mean it purely as magic used by Pegasus. I also just noticed all the errors in my last post, it probably made me harder to understand. Sorry about that
7589954
Gravely Hill Interchange on the M6 is supposed to be a closed loop, as in gyratory, or circulator.
People Have got lost on it.
7590922 I specifically meant "big square" bales.
forbeslucerne.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Lucerne-Hay-Large-Square-Bale.jpg
Agreed that small square bales can be stacked by hand.
7590935
Ah. I didn't know there was such a thing as a big square bale. What would you even do with it?
7591004 well yes but I don't want her and Aric to end badly either yo!
7590099 I personally think that magic is basically the same thing, just manipulated differantly by the three tribes.
I got up to the observation floor, which had the little glass boxes that stuck out, and I looped around that twice just so that everyone who didn't notice me on the first lap got a second chance, and then I headed down for the shore.
Shameless Silver Glow is shameless.
7591105
Just over three million words, and counting. One of these days I'll take a month off and just binge.
(For comparison, that's almost twice A Song Of Ice And Fire, and just this side of Wheel of Time.)
Edit: It ended up taking like three months.
7591169
Or about 20 Megabytes and climbing.
Larger than the first hard drives, but still smaller than the highest capacity floppies. LS120 Magnetooptical drives were supposed to be able to use their dedicated 120 Meg read write technology, to store about 30 Meg on a standard 1.44 Floppy. Of course, that couldnt be allowed between modern BD and HDR drives, I mean, only need to use a different software routine to access a competing product? think of the market penetration.
Im thinking of the penetration and Its not to do with the market.