South out of Tukwila
Destination Unknown
South out of Tukwila
Admiral Biscuit
The Space Needle was ghostly in the mist, almost like a giant tree rising in a misty forest, its top invisible to her.
She circled its trunk and started climbing, staying far enough from the side to be clear of the elevators that ran outside—she was reasonably sure that they stayed attached to the side, but hadn’t paid them all that much attention when she was in the park.
It would have been nice if the top of the Space Needle had been sticking out of the clouds, but it wasn’t. She’d only seen that one time before on a foggy day in New York City. Did people appreciate how they could get out of the gloomy streets if they wanted by just riding elevators to the tops of all the tall buildings?
Sweetsong stayed cautious until she could see the shadowy base of the observation deck above her. It was hard to know when she was in a cloud just how much visibility she actually had.
She’d come in closer than she meant to, and now that she had her objective in sight, she started to angle out to the side, intending to fly by the restaurant windows.
That plan was a bad plan; she should have checked their hours of operation on the sign below. They didn’t open until lunch, so the only people in there were a skeleton crew getting everything ready for opening.
There were people on the observation deck, although there wasn’t much for them to observe. Not until she flew into view, anyway.
•••
Sometimes she sang when she flew, but usually not for an audience. She hadn’t intended to, but the smell of rain and sea spray was in her nose, the distant keening of seabirds, and she started to sing a traditional fishing song that all pegasi knew, first to herself and then out loud, still circling the Space Needle.
In some ways, it was not unlike the mast of a sailing ship, and she’d heard stories from sailors about fogs and mists so thick that when they were up in the rigging, they couldn’t see the ship below them.
She wracked her brain for any English sea shanties that she might know, finally settling on The Ballad of the Greenland Whalers. It would have been better if she’d been able to get out her guitar, but that wasn’t really an instrument to be played while flying.
Some sailorpegasi carried concertinas; maybe she could get one of her own.
It would have been nice to have people singing along, too. That was a strange thing about humans; they enjoyed her music, but even when she was singing human songs they’d rarely join in, even if it was a song meant for many people to sing. The only exception she’d noticed so far was Christmas carols—when she started singing those, people did join in.
But then as she orbited around she found a man who was at least mouthing the words, and she hovered in place and motioned for him to sing with her, and he did.
Once they’d finished singing, she flew up and over the glass barriers, landing on the concrete walkway. She hadn’t intended to, but it felt like the right thing to do. Would they get mad if she started singing on their tower? Would they be mad if she’d gotten up there without one of the elevators?
More importantly, what could they do about it? The first sight of black-clad security people and she’d be off the edge, and they couldn’t follow her. She lifted the flap on her saddlebags and got out her fishing hat, found a good spot on a glass bench, and started singing.
•••
She performed for almost an hour before she got the prickly feeling in her fur that she’d overstayed her welcome, so she cut her song a verse short, tucked her hat back in her saddlebags, and departed the way she’d come, over the edge and this time racing for the BNSF tracks only a few blocks southwest.
The rain had moved on, and the last clouds were breaking up or drifting off, leaving behind a rain-slicked city and bright patches of sunlight. There was almost no chance of making a quick escape on a passing train, but then she didn’t have to. It’d take them a while to get to the bottom of the tower and head down the street, if they even cared to chase her.
Still, she kept an ear turned back just in case they had a helicopter.
•••
She hadn’t expected to pass over a sculpture park alongside the tracks. Getting on a train would be too obvious with all the people around, and she’d started angling south to follow the tracks before she realized the opportunity she had in front of her.
The park had a bridge over the railroad tracks, and she set up at the end of that, which would both give her an opportunity to earn more bits and keep an eye on the trains that passed below, let her get an idea of what kinds of southbound trains were passing.
•••
She sang until the rain came back. People were generous; it wasn’t polite to count out the money in her fishing hat in front of an audience, but she could tell just by its weight. If people had made more of their money out of metal instead of cotton paper, she could get a better estimate by hefting her hat.
The end of the walkway jutted out, a runway for a pegasus, and she hopped over the edge and soared across Broad Street before picking up altitude, following in the trail of an intermodal train which had passed beneath her as she sang her last song.
Sweetsong settled on the roof of a gentrified warehouse long enough to sort her money—the people in Seattle had been very generous—and looked down at the tracks passing by, considering her options. Boarding a train here, if she even could, would be anything but subtle, and she’d found a spot near the airport.
On the downside, that meant flying miles and miles south, and it was starting to rain again. Her wings were sore, and her breakfast biscuit was nothing but a memory.
Food, then find a way to hitch a ride. A block off the main street, she found a bento house which was expensive but presented her sashimi in a wooden box. It was awkward to carry but more durable than the Styrofoam or cardboard wrappers she usually got with food.
By the time she’d gotten her bento box, it had started to drizzle again. Sweetsong didn’t feel like flying all the way back to Tukwila in the rain, so she considered other options. She’d seen a tram on her way to the Space Needle and remembered seeing signs for it where she’d left the monorail, and headed off in that direction.
It was only three dollars to ride, but she wasn’t supposed to eat her food on the tram, so she ate while two trams passed by, then got on the third.
The tram was running underground, which she didn’t like, although with the lights in the cars it wasn’t so bad, and she knew that it came out of the tunnel and ran on bridges. Unless there were more identical trains, something she hadn’t considered as it reached its second station stop, still underground.
She started humming Don’t Sleep on the Subway and concentrated on the feel of the motors as the tram accelerated away from the station, and soon enough they were back on the surface, running behind warehouses and under highway bridges—familiar territory for her.
Then the train started climbing up a bridge after it left a station, crossing over a freight line and past a storage yard for light rail trains, and it went right from the bridge into another tunnel without any warning.
Practically as soon as it came out, it was back on a bridge again, and then it came back down and ran in the middle of a street.
•••
It was still grounded at Rainier Beach, the closest stop to the bridge she’d found earlier. From the station, she couldn’t see the airport, but knew about where it was, and once she’d checked for any low-flying airplanes, she climbed up to see if she could spot it.
The airport was lost in the mist, so she picked a roughly west route and headed that way. Rainier Beach didn’t actually have a beach but it did have a ridge of trees that roads didn’t cross, which left her without one of the most useful routes to follow. Everypony knew IFR stood for “I follow road.”
Since she’d been in the company of pilots when she first spotted the bridge, she hadn’t gotten as good a look at it as she’d wanted to, and upon closer inspection it wasn’t a good location. Too close to the yard throat, and not enough cover. To the north, the tracks ran right alongside the airport, and that wouldn’t be good, either, but maybe to the south—the highway ran above the tracks on a hillside, and there might be a good place along the scrubby embankment to tuck away, or else a bridge further down that was better.
As if to mock her, a slow freight rumbled beneath her, idling into the yard, trailing blocks of double-stack cars.
She followed it along, climbing a few hundred feet up and watching for a bridge or somewhere she could hide; at the south end of the yard she found a perfect spot: the highway crossed over the yard on a nice, wide bridge, and she wasn’t too far from a Jack in the Box if she got hungry waiting for a train.
•••
Jack in the Box wasn’t great, but it was cheap. She’d decided to fly to a second, taller bridge which would give her a better view of the yard; when a train came through, she could just fly down to it.
If a train came through; all afternoon it had been nothing but intermodals, passenger trains, and one mixed northbound train.
She sprinkled her leftover fries on the bridge abutment for the birds, crumpled up her trash, stuffed it into her saddlebags, and settled down to wait.
•••
Her patience was finally rewarded when a grain unit train rolled slowly into the yard, a trio of locomotives at point. It was on the far side of the yard, to keep it out of the way of loading and unloading operations. She waited until the locomotives had passed under her, then flew across the tracks, keeping against the side of the I-5 bridge.
She had her pick of cars, finally settling on a weather-worn, heavily-graffitied Kansas City Southern car. This one had a few crumpled water bottles and a Zebra Cakes wrapper, evidence of a past rider. Sweetsong frowned, she didn’t like leaving things behind, especially litter. It wasn’t much effort to carry it back out and dispose of it properly.
She settled in as the train bumped through switches in the yard throat, keeping low since she was still in the yard and there might be workers everywhere.
Before too long, the train went over a narrow creek, and she was back on the main. It still hadn’t picked up too much speed, and a minute later she found out why; it went under a signal bridge and then diverted onto a side track.
She could see the Amtrak station from the wrong side as they went by and the train was moving slowly, she could still get off if she wanted to. Wait and find another.
Instead, she decided to see where this train would take her.
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I almost made it to Seattle with her today, or at least the metro area. I have a load from Salem, Or to Lakewood. Unfortunately' the snow was brutal and I-5 NB was completely blocked at exit 16 by a massive accident and I sat at a dead stop for over 4 hours. I ended up having to turn around and stop in Portland before I ran out of hours. I get to try again tomorrow.
Despite only being in the state for 32 miles, I can say that it was my least favorite visit to Washington and I'm happy Sweetsong had a great time!
Unfortunately we don’t have any public train transport in Wisconsin... at least none that I know of
Got to watch out for those unexpected side tracks. You could end going a totally different direction through completly unrealistic and unsuitable for traffic terrain, and the only reason it exists is it was a repair job when the mainline was cut through a massive landslip.
11163785
Ooh, that’s rough. I’ve never had to deal with complete road shutdowns due to snow, but it’s been close a couple of times, and if I hadn’t been in a little four-wheeler that could easily take an alternate route, I might have been stuck with everyone on the highway.
I did miss one call due to snow back when I was driving wrecker. We had a police call, which has a guaranteed response time, and I did my best, but the roads were just too bad to get there in time and they cancelled on us. Which kind of sucked; I was only a mile away when they did.
Heh, yeah, I could see how it would be.
11163820
You’ve got Amtrak and I think that Metra hits some of the greater Chicago area; other than that, you don’t have anything that I know of.
I just googled it; Metra gets you to Fox Lake or Kenosha (and points south); Amtrak has stops in Columbus, LaCrosse, Milwaukee (two stops!), Portage, Sturtevant, Tomah, and Wisconsin Dells. You’ve also got five tourists/excursion lines, and that’s pretty much it.
11164391
Nothing like winding up on a train that goes down a side track and then just falls into a canal at the end of the tracks
11160745
Ah, thanks.
Though, interesting. As I recall, that was my first interpretation, but then as things continued I dismissed it for not sufficiently fitting the evidence I thought the chapter was presenting. She very briefly mentions landing on the roof of the monorail, then it is, looking at it now, just implied she got off after it disordered her wings -- but only after that does she describe seeing the monorail from nearby ("While the monorail had seemed safe enough from the ground, seeing it as it approached the station gave her pause. It was balanced on a single rail, and she couldn’t figure out why it didn’t fall off."). Then she mentions feeling the current as the train approached the station, with no mention of having felt it while actively flying up to and landing on the monorail...
...Wait, hang on, and looking at the wording of your comment again: "and train-surfing her way to the next station"? So did she actually ride it for more than a few seconds? Even my first interpretation just had her landing, almost immediately deciding she didn't like it, and hopping off.
...Yeah, sorry, the description in the text of this bit just does not seem to be working for me in the sense of conveying what you meant to convey, sorry.
Oh, I mentioned them a while back, I think. But rail lines, for instance, can be displayed again (though I think the new system for that is clunkier, at least as an end user).
11166791
I’ll have to check what I wrote, but she did not surf the monorail. It’s very possible I was unclear in the story on that.
It does show train and bus routes when you click on them, at least on my end. I don’t think it shows freight lines, although it might and I don’t know how to use that function. I’ve been tracing them manually for the most part, or finding route maps and then finding them on Google Maps.
11167365
That’s a good song. That’s one Sweetsong could sing, too.
I would tell her you can't fit every New Yorker into the elevator..
But you do capture the unique perspective a magic pony would have of the Lower 48.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/2/5/1954142.jpg
Source.
I guess falling into randoms songs (or joining them) is merely a pony thing.
Maybe, but then you may not be ably to take flight anymore after a day of singing in the park...
11186885
That’s a fantastic picture!
For the most part, yeah. Although I feel if she were to sing songs kids knew, they’d be more likely to join in than adults.
That’s a fair point. I wonder how ponies deal with that with their money? Like if she’s going to the bank to put a down-payment on a new cloud, can she even carry all the bits in one trip?
this along with some of her other behaviors like the incident in the tunnel really help characterize her as a bit of a worry wort. It's kind of cute, and makes me wonder if she is running from something in her past.
Or maybe I am over thinking things
11204333
She’s cautious, maybe a bit more than she should be (or maybe not; most of what she’s doing is technically or actually illegal).
I don’t think she’s running from anything; she’s just got the normal pegasus wanderlust but she’s too lazy to fly on her own if she can avoid it, so hopping freight trains is a good way to get from one place to the next.
11178804
Hah, that’s a fair point. I wonder how many of them you can get in elevators? What’s the overall elevator capacity in NYC?
Thank you!
Flying in clouds is very dangerous.
In the days when money was all coins, it one sorts my metal, one can determine the value by weighing coins. I mentioned that if a campaign I created, one can figure out the values of coinage by weight.
11248856
Less dangerous with modern aids to navigation; it’s not very risky in an airliner. Probably isn’t generally risky for pegasi in Equestria, but of course on Earth they’d have to contend with other things that might be in the cloud, like an airliner.
Assuming that they keep using the same metal for the same value of coin, anyway. Which probably most older civilizations would do.
I really appreciated this