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Wednesday, Jan. 10

We wake up around 6:30, shower (two showers in 24 hours -- what luxury!) and walk a few miles to the rail yard, showing up at the departure yard a little after eight. To our surprise and consternation, the 7:30 train actually left at 7:30 -- a first (and almost a last) occurrence on the trip that leaves me muttering about Stalin. After dithering a bit and deciding we have no interest in hanging around Willard for another day, we head to the library to plan out a new route, hoping to catch out in the afternoon. Checking routes, in fact, is what we'd planned on doing yesterday, but the thrill of being warm and in civilization had pushed the plan from our minds.

The library didn't open 'til 10 a.m., though, leaving us with an hour or so to kill. After 30 minutes of sitting in the wind on the sidewalk, I suggest heading to Trinity Lutheran Church, an imposing building sitting across the street. The doors are all locked, but eventually we're able to get the attention of the secretary, who lets us in. I start talking first -- hoping to forestall weirdness from my Virgil -- telling the secretary we're passing through town and asking her if we can sit in the sanctuary for half an hour. Rapid-T cuts in and begins explaining that we're missionaries, a claim that moves him closer to collecting the complete set of quizzical looks.

She leads us to the sanctuary and we head for pews on opposite sides of the church, sitting in silence for a few minutes. After 20 minutes, the pastor shows up – with his first question being what type of missionaries we are.

After clearing up the "confusion" ("No, pastor, my friend was just lying to your secretary" is just a strange thing to say.), we chatted with the Rev. Kent Wilson for a few minutes, with Rapid-T occasionally hijacking the discussion to explain why all conservative Christians are evil. Out of nowhere, then, Wilson says he wants to show us a multimedia project the church has been working on. Now, I've been in a lot of churches, I've covered religion, I know bunches of pastors: there are few things more frightening then having a pastor invite you to view a videotape of the youth group's latest drama. So I didn't figure we were in for an enjoyable wait for the library.

To my amazement, the pastor leads us upstairs to an alcove where I encounter one of the sweetest collections of high tech gadgetry I've ever seen gracing a church. Wilson then runs us through a series of PowerPoint presentations, videos, slides and other multimedia extravaganza – spending two hours talking geek speak and explaining how his church is in the forefront of a high-tech multimedia religious revolution. Before we leave the alcove, we ask to add requests to the prayer list sitting by the sound board. Rapid-T asks for peace between Jews and Christians. I ask for traveling mercies.

Wilson takes us to his office, then, where he prays, takes my picture with his digital camera, and invites us, if we're in town, to come back for a community dinner and service that evening. He then leads us to the kitchen, makes us the best cheese sandwiches I've ever had in my life, and shows us the door, inviting us back if we need anything else.

We walk out of the church in a daze: warm, fed, heads spinning; and cruise over the library. While Rapid-T looks up railroad maps, I peruse USA Today, feeling almost like a civilized member of society. Heck, I'd even had a shower that morning.

Rapid-T hits the computers again, a situation that takes on a slightly surreal note when his Hotmail account keeps crashing. Eventually, he leans back in his chair and (literally) begins sobbing. I fix the problem and life goes on. Later, he goes on a 15-minute tirade against the Internet: "It's so hyped up and all the ads show it so pretty, but it's really slow. Unless you're a millionaire, you don't really get the experience. The Internet sucks." And so on.

Before leaving, though, we check out the web sites we're using to plan the trip, including the Bull Sheet, a railfan resource that shows when trains arrive and leave from certain yards; email suggestions from the train hopping list we're on; and the web sites of CSX and Norfolk Southern. We figure on heading to Columbus, Ohio, now, a town from which we can, it appears, get to Cincinnati. From there, we can catch a hotshot to Tennessee, cut down to New Orleans and blast over to Arizona.

On the way from the library to the train yard, we pass the Willard Food Bank, open for the first time since we hit town. We go in and I explain we're just passing through and ask if we can have one of the dozens of bags of apples sitting up front. The man running the place says sure, and then begins to load us up with a variety of portable food stuffs, including pretzels, potted meat, oranges and crackers. We head back to the train yard, consume most of the oranges at the little box we'd stashed our bags in and then, for what seems like the hundredth time, head to the opposite end of the yard to catch our train. It's around 7 p.m.

The train's a short one and leaving sometime soon, so we grab the first rideable car we've seen: a gondola. Gondolas are like huge metal shoeboxes without a top. Their 5 1/2-foot-high walls provide a decent windbreak, but it probably won't be the best ride in a Ohio winter. While we're waiting, Rapid-T susses out the rest of the train and finds a Canadian grainer -- similar to the one we rode in the first night, but with only one, smaller cubbyhole that's rideable; the hole on the other side is filled with brake machinary. He offers it to me, I accept, and a few minutes later I'm sitting upright, with my knees to my chest, in a hole whose floor is covered with bolt heads. The train leaves about an hour later, providing perhaps the least enjoyable ride of the trip. Because of the seating arrangement I can't see out, and every time I drift off I'm awakened by either the cold or the bolts. The cold problem is different than in the past, though; the entry hole is small enough that I can block most of it with my duffel bag, but a eight-inch hole in the back corner directs a stream of cold air to my left foot the entire trip. By the time we arrive in Columbus -- awaking me in a blind panic, convinced Rapid-T's gone -- I have no circulation in my entire left leg (and, indeed, wake up at one point during the trip convinced I've had a stroke. Eerie.)