Return Of The Caboose

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This post is about the Return Of The Caboose. Several friends are involved in making her resurrection possible.

And then, after one week, I received a call from building management: the janitor had told them that he had managed to retrieve the Caboose! Retrieve from… the scrap press? No. According to the janitor, she had not in fact ended up in the recycling yard, she had actually been in a storage shed in the very building where I was staying, and I could get her back today.

There was just one tiny problem: she had been sawed up into a few parts.

the stick and the bell

I met the janitor the next day. He gave me an awkward smile and a pile of metal that had once been the Caboose. She reminded me of a dead spider. I checked if everything was there. My stick, the bell that my grandma had given me, the handlebars. Then I thanked the janitor and gave him a chocolate bar.

I put the amputated Caboose in the corner of the yard where she had been staying before, and I added a laminated note to it: PLEASE DO NOT DISPOSE, the note said, and it had my phone number on it.

Munich

The next day I got another call from building management. There had been a new complaint about the Caboose. Or maybe there had been several complaints, that wasn’t quite clear. Anyway I took the sawed up parts and put them in the basement.

A few days and a lot of ice cream later my friend Robert came by in his station wagon and helped me take the Caboose to a gentleman named Pit. Pit had offered to help me weld her back together.

It only took a few hours, during which I stood around awkwardly while Pit was busy sanding and welding. It reminded me of that time she had gotten fixed up in the Shanshan desert of Xinjiang. Or of her first resurrection after the accident near Tashkent.

uncounted kilometers

When she was done, I took the Caboose home to Munich. It was a 13km walk that somehow didn’t count as part of The Longest Way.

I had bought an airtag for her, and I took her to a different yard to rest, one that would hopefully be friendlier to her.

Then I went and got drunk with my friend Bower.

pictures

the return of the Caboose:

Return Of The Caboose

dog stick still there

Grandma’s bell still there

I sit with the sawed up parts of my friend, the Caboose.

Caboose back in her resting place in the yard

Caboose with a sign

the Caboose in Lilu’s basement

with Martin

hot chocolate in a bar

with Mira and Moe

Robert transporting the Caboose to Pit’s garage

the Caboose in Robert’s car

with Robert

fixing the Caboose with Pit

Pit at work on the Caboose

welding the Caboose

Vive la Caboose!

Pit, savior of the Caboose

the way from Pit’s garage to Schwabing

pulling the frame of the Caboose

bridge to Munich

English Garden in Munich

The Longest Way with the frame of the Caboose

a drink with the restored Caboose

the Caboose in her new resting place

decided to put an airtag into the Caboose

out drinking in Munich

Dr. Funk’s Son