Opening

The wind howls along a lonely stretch of railroad. Snow drifts line the track, the product of snowstorms that have been hammering the area known as the Midwest snow belt for weeks on end. It’s just after Christmas and the number 5 train is making its way down the line, the double engines leading the way slowly but surely.

The train, with its nearly 160 passengers, was due in Cleveland nearly 2 hours ago, but the weather hasn’t let up and the blizzard is making travel nearly impossible. Some of the passengers have been talking about the possibility of the train getting stuck, but the driver of the lead engine, The Socrates, is determined to make it to their destination.

As they approach the small burg of Ashtabula, Ohio, a lone bridge stands between them and the station. It’s a newer structure, having only been built 11 years prior,…

This is the first transcript of the new season. I'm going to be uploading the written transcripts for each episode of season 2 here for those who would like to read them.

Opening

The year is 1889. You’re sitting around a campfire after a long day of logging. The sweat has finally dried off your brow and the smell of smoke and beans fills the air. You’ve only been on the job for a few weeks, having moved to northern Wisconsin to escape the city life that had become too busy to bear.

Lost in your own thoughts, you don’t even notice when someone new joins the circle sitting around your fire. The sound of a match striking pulls you into the moment and you look up to see the man lighting a cigarette, tossing the used match into the fire as he looks over at you.

“So, you’re the…

Hospitals for children should not exist. I should probably explain a bit more than that though.

A person who has not even experienced life, who’s never had their first love, never fallen behind on their mortgage and all the other good and bad experiences life has to offer shouldn’t have to face death.

That anyone could imagine a world where innocents suffer is beyond comprehension, and if there is a being that allows all the suffering, I only hope I get to face them one day.

See, it’s my job to ferry their souls.

I’ll never forget the first one. She was only 4, and her parents were inconsolable as she lay taking her final breaths. I’d been hovering for weeks, waiting on the day to come. The doctors and nurses had been in and out, running tests and doing everything in their power, but there was never truly any…

I didn't post about this the first time, but I need a place to vent and maybe even have a conversation or two.

Last June (2024) my son wound up sick in the hospital thanks to pneumonia. His body had a bad reaction to the infection, and his chest filled up with fluid. They were able to get the majority of the fluid out, but there was some scarring that we were told would be going away over time.

A couple months ago, a follow up visit showed there was more scarring than before. It wasn't going away, it was spreading. Last week, he went through surgery to remove it.

The surgeon said it was the worst case he'd seen in 15 years. We thought we were gonna lose him, or at best he would lose a lung.

As I sit here, 3 days after the surgery, I'm finding myself…

I just wanted to post a bit about the podcast, especially as a lot has changed in recent months. There's also the fact that I don't really have many other places to post anymore as Facebook has kind of taken a nosedive, and most other social media sites just plain suck. If the stuff I post isn't going to be shown, it might as well not be shown in a place I like 😁

Anyway.

I've just started season 2 of The Long Way Home, and I'm finding it a lot more fun to record and even listen back to as I go. I kind of wanted to create something that I would like to listen to late at night, driving down deserted roads in the middle of nowhere, and I think I managed that.

I've got a lot planned for the upcoming season, including some deep dives into older…

In case anyone ever makes their way over here, I wanted to provide a place to discuss things from the various episodes of my main podcast.

Feel free to share your own stories and things that came to mind as you were listening. I grew up in the '90s so that's where a lot of the inspiration for this podcast came from, but I'd love to hear stories from others who grew up in different places and times.

Say hi below and then go start a new post!

I've been all over the place on YouTube and other platforms since I started this journey, but I've never really been as consistent as I should be. I really do want to grow a community, and even though I know forums are "soooo 2000", I kind of want to pick this one back up.

There may never be a ton of people on here, but I do want it to be a place where people can find some new friends and discuss niche interests that maybe don't fit anywhere else on the internet.

Along that same line, the internet in general and social media is such a mess. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to talk in a place where there is no algorithm to dictate what you see and moderators actually pay attention to what gets posted to keep the riff-raff out? I think so.

Say hi below…

I figured I would take a minute just to add a post on here to give it at least some activity :)

In the past few weeks I have managed to complete my novel and get stuff done so I can start my degree program next week. There's always something to do, but hopefully things will be falling into a better rhythm as the year goes on. I do want to get back on track with the monthly blog posts since I missed the one for December both here and on Patreon, but I do think the stuff I have accomplished in the past few months has made the lack of posts OK.

You know those times where you have multiple accounts, one for testing, one for other testing and one as your main? Well, that is me on this site. I am trying something a little different with this forum (see the other post by my alt account for rules/guidelines) and I am curious to see if it actually goes anywhere. There are so many sites in 2022 that ask you to sign up, and so many that are social media based, that I doubt anyone is going to realistically sign up for a forum on a random website. But hey, who knows? Maybe I will be proven wrong and find out that people want something like this.

Personally, I do want a place like this. Free from the restrictions of other sites and able to post whatever I feel like posting. My goal here is to keep this place as open…