Light rain was falling as I drove to the Paso Robles Amtrak station just after midnight on the morning of Friday, February 1st. Shortly before I arrived, there was a break in the rain, and after parking my car I took a walk around the depot. Paso Robles is a city unafraid of any building project. The old Southern Pacific depot was severely damaged in a fire in the late eighties, and in its place now stands the "restoration", essentially a new strip mall painted yellow with a couple of original walls on the end. Next to that is the Amtrak station. Built at around the same time, it's a nice little building that captures the feel of an old small-town depot.

This was yet another last-minute train ride. I was working a rotating schedule which gave me a four day weekend every six weeks. I think it was on the Tuesday before my long weekend that I decided I wanted to take a winter trip over the Rockies. I'd leave Paso Robles on the 12:45am bus to Emeryville. The round trip to Denver would mean I'd get there on Saturday night, I'd leave Sunday morning, and I'd be home at around 3am on my birthday: Tuesday, February 6th. I took that day off work so I'd be able to sleep all day and recover. If I would have known when I'd really be returning, I probably wouldn't have bothered going at all - and I would have missed out on a wonderful adventure.

I had packed light for this trip. I had the clothes on my back, and a pair of pants, couple of t-shirts, and necessities in a brown paper bag. I'm getting better at packing light. I've learned the art of T-shirt traveling. A nice shirt with a new t-shirt under it every day makes most of your clothing disposable.

A homeless man was sleeping under the roof near the entry way, all his belongings stuffed in a couple of plastic bags that were under his bench. I wanted to slip an anonymous $20 into the bag, but I was afraid of his mood if he woke up when I had a hand on his stuff. Probably. Perhaps it's a feeling many of us have - "I'd give him some money but I don't have any change", "He's just going to spend it on booze", any of a number of reasons. Before and since I've walked past someone who needed the few bucks I had on me much more than I did. When the rain started coming down again, I was fortunate to have the