Introduction

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In January 2001, a friend and I boarded a train for Florida … no, wait — that doesn’t really tell the story. Let’s try it this way: On a snowy night in January, in the company of a madman, I skulked through the streets of the Bronx toward a freight train depot. Once there I squeezed into a cubbyhole hidden in a grain car, taking the first step in a 2,000-mile, 11-day, 10-state freight train odyssey across the eastern seaboard.

The trip was part of the research I did for an article examining the lives of modern American hobos. This is a copy of the real-time journal I kept during the trip.

Here’s where everything starts