April 9th: It was time to head for home. At the southern tip of a spit of La Playa, my GPS said I was 999 miles from my driveway. Couldn't make 1000!

So on the morning of Good Friday, I was at the Los Mochis RR station for the El Segundo all the way to Chihuahua. Made another good friend, Francisco. In his twenties, we shared pretty good conversation with the help of my Spanish-English dictionary. A NEW Mexican, young, educated, cell phone and all. We got to Chihuahua at 2AM and were subjected to a military baggage check as we stumbled off of the train.

Having done my homework before leaving Denver, I knew that (in theory)I could catch a bus at 3AM that would go to El Paso and then Denver. The cab driver had his girlfriend in the passenger seat, at first I thought this was a pimp setup. But no, as I gagged on her bad perfume, she fawned on him as he blasted through stop signs at 30mph, red lights if he didn't see any headlights coming, but he got me to the station.

The rest of the trip was uneventful and without further photographs. I got the bus that went over the border, waited two hours in El Paso, then one of the express "Mexican" buses to Denver. With a few snowflakes coming down in Denver, I caught the RTD to Englewood, which let me off two blocks from home, 41 hours after I got on the train, almost 999 miles away!