We grab breakfast and head to the yards. When we get near the trains, we start hiding in the shadows. We spend a lot of time in the shadows, mostly near freeway underpasses and garbage-strewn fields. It quickly becomes clear to me that hopping trains isn't much more than a fairy-tale version of homelessness. The only folks Eddy Joe tries to steer clear of are the bulls.
Bulls are train security.
Then he radioed the engineer and had Eddy Joe tossed out on his ass. The bulls are the bad men at the other end of the fairy tale. This is Eddy Joe's advice to me on the mechanics of leaping aboard a moving train. He tells me this as we're about to jump our first train, out of Denver. It's well past midnight, and he's running through the dark alongside a train.