Runaway Train

Song by Kasey Chambers (here) or vid below

"I'm gonna take ya down to the railway line
I'm a gonna take ya where your heart won't break ya
And the water tastes like wine..."

Anyone who hangs with me for the least bit of time learns I am a Train Junkie. I love traveling by Amtrak and have done many multi-day trips, in coach, all over the country. And what no one knew, until now, is that both my grandfather and uncle were engineers on freight trains.  Even though I grew up a long way away from them, the love of the rails runs deep in my family.

A train act was always in the side of my mind and I had many visions of how it would play out, but when it came time to buy set parts and pick a song I had to go with what was available and this sexy mesh freight train was just the right thing.

Back in my zine writing/publishing days I put out one "Rockin' the Rails" with all kinds of moments I collected on an epic-ly long trip cross country, that involved two layovers in big cities, where Amtrak foot the bill.  By the time I made to my parent's house, my mom said, "You would have got here faster by dogsled." And she was kind of right.  But I loved the trip, I had lots of time to write and listen to music.  I made an accompanying mixed CD to go with the 'zine.  So when it was time to do my train act, I went to it for the perfect song. 

Out of 14 songs, I found the right one.  I have other strong contenders that are on my song list and may appear in the future as a totally different act.  I am not much of a modern country fan, but I came across Kasey Chambers via the womyn's music scene and really loved the CD. This song in particular always just got me, where it counts. *wink*

Somehow I managed to move all 352 mesh prims of of a 60m train with a spot on mover a distance of over 50m. A feat which is not supposed to be possible, but I will tell my secrets to anyone who needs to know.  The rest of the set was inspired by 70's TV Westerns, I needed to cover most of the stage and the new windows on the theater to hide my train.  So I made a big TV not too unlike one my parents had when I was a kid.  As for the dancing, I wanted to do to complicated jumping between the cars and such, but in the end the continuity of the dance and sheer sexiness of the moves was more important to me.

The night of the show, I also managed to do something that should be impossible, I was wearing two copies of my shape.  I did not see it, nor did most other folks, but it gave me the most burly biceps EVER, and I had to spend the rest of the night cleaning up Jess's drool trail that followed me. *giggles*