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A Caltrain Death, From Inside The Train
We were stuffing our stuff into a backpack as the train left 22nd Street at 4:30 this afternoon when the hissing started and the train slowed. All of the people in the bike car stirred; something had happened. The train stopped in the middle of the tunnel, and the conductor came over the PA. He sounded tense. "There is an emergency situation," he said. "We'll be delayed here for some time. Please be patient."
A minute later, he came on again. "Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a fatality. This train must stay here until emergency crews arrive. We will be exiting the tunnel, and then we will be holding. Please be patient."
So we waited, and the train pulled out of the tunnel, and we sat just south of 16th street for five minutes, then ten. An older man, chubby with a scruffy beard and battered baseball hat, started to yell.
"Get me the fuck off of this train!" he yelled. "I have to get off this train because I have a pain appointment. Get me off this train!" He accosted the conductor, who asked him to sit back down and, politely, to shut up. The guy stayed calm for a minute, then started yelling again.
He must have set off the teenaged girl with the spiked belt, who ran to the front compartments and hammered on the door until the conductor opened it, obviously tired, his radio going a mile per minute.
"I have to get off this fucking train!" she shouted. "Look, there's a street right there and I can just walk, and I have to get off the train right now! Please, let me off the train!" The old guy joined in, heckling her and swearing to sue Caltrain, the conductor, and anyone else who got in the way of his medical marijuana appointment.
"I have AIDS and I'm going to die in three months," he said. "I have to get up to get my marijuana before the pot club closes."
The conductor went back to the doors and came over the PA again.
"Everyone, please be patient," he said. "There is a reserve crew coming with another train - it has left 4th and King and is on the way. When it gets here, we will transfer you to that train, but this train has to stay at the scene of the incident."
The old man started swearing again. The teenager stayed quiet. After a few minutes, the other train pulled alongside, and our train began to exit out the bike car door. The conductor stayed at the bottom, helping with luggage, swinging children down the high stair, holding our bikes for us as we stepped down.
"Thanks, man," we said. We were the second-to-last off the train.
"No problem," he said. Beads of sweat were dripping off of his shaved head. Seven or eight bikers were gathered around another Caltrain employee.
"We can't really get you on the bike car," he said. "Are you guys ok to just walk up to Sixteenth and bike from there?"
To a cycle, we all were. There was no sign of blood or anything on the front of our train.
The ride home was beautiful - the sun shined through clean air. A smell of grilled burgers and the thrum of conversation came out of Zeitgeist. Two men walked arm in arm down Duboce as we rode up; one in shorts and sandals, the other in a bunny suit. The last of the cyclists from Caltrain split off near the Market Street Safeway, where two guys with shopping carts waited patiently with carts full of cans. We were an hour late, but gloriously, sweatily, happily alive.