Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones before a banner weekend. Today is Juneteenth, Saturday is pizza night (at least for me), and Sunday is Father’s Day and the summer solstice.

Some suggestions:

And as for the summer solstice, what a gift! The maximum amount of sunlight this whole year. I’m hoping to play as much tennis as possible, but who’s to say we shouldn’t do as the Seattleites do … with a solstice parade that includes a bunch of naked cyclists.

Do one long thumb scroll for more Cville-specific updates like local events, cool houses, and pets to adopt.

🐶 Speaking of pets: Jolene! Floppy hound ears are their own type of therapy, and you can get a lot of free sessions by adopting this girliepop (Redbone Coonhound mix, 1 years old, 40 lbs).

🐱 Plus a mystery cat named Cici.

Last Friday, I took the day off work to go on a historic train ride, and I decided to invite my dad because 1) it’s good to spend time with family and 2) this man is an absolute vector for plot. It’s uncanny how many random and unexpected things happen when I’m hanging out with him. Since we were going to visit an antique steam locomotive, I figured we might need to BYO some action.

As a kid, my dad’s ability to create “incidents” drove me crazy. He’d take me to soccer practice and somehow we’d end up doing something embarrassing like trespassing on a private estate or driving across a river. As an adult, though, I love this. Who needs TV when you have my dad.

A recent plot bonus is that when he retired, he made the mistake of getting himself a new car. So far, it’s suffered a mice-in-engine attack, two blown tires on the highway, a smashed window (by a tractor), an overflowing gas tank, and my personal favorite, a dead battery because my dad forgot to turn the car off before going for a 3-hour walk.

So honestly, as far as this historic train trip goes, we might not even make it to the station.

We headed along 29 and then 64 over the mountains toward Staunton. The Summer of Steam event started at 1pm, and the confirmation email I’d received the night before suggested that we plan to arrive 2-3 hours prior to departure.

Having never even arrived for an international flight 3 hours early, we decided 10 minutes before the train whistle would be enough time. That was the first smart thing we did all day. The least smart thing, it turned out, was probably to buy tickets for this event at all.

If you haven’t been, Staunton is a little mountain town with a hippie community, a Shakespeare theater, beautiful old houses that are still relatively affordable, and like any small town looking to revitalize itself, an asylum-to-condominums development project. And back when Western State Asylum was still doing atrocious things in broad daylight, Staunton was also very much a big rail town, connecting trains in the Shenandoah Valley to places like Richmond and DC.

Now, though, the passenger train only runs three times a week. Except for special historic locomotive events! These are put on by the folks at the Virginia Scenic Railway, who I am now convinced may be the direct descendants of Western State Asylum’s medical superintendents.

We parked right out front at 12:49pm, early even by our standards thanks to an unexpectedly uneventful car trip. We walked the 20 feet to the station where a small line had gathered near the train. Kids were running around, a few elderly couples were chitchatting, and a handful of men with cameras around their necks were taking photos of the Norfolk & Western 611, today’s main squeeze locomotive.

The 611 is the only remaining “J Class” steam train around, which was basically like the Apple of steam technology back in the day. As someone who’s interested in sustainable forms of travel like electric trains — which can run on clean energy sources rather than planet-warming fuels like diesel — I figured a nod back toward previous engineering feats might be an interesting way to spend an afternoon.

The problem was that I was imagining a ride on the Hogwarts Express. And as we boarded the train and walked all the way to the final row, I realized that what we were about to get was the equivalent of a Ryanair flight to Frankfurt.

“It looks like we’re just doing the abridged version, Dad,” I said as we scooted into what were once red velvet seats. “Just an hour and a half to Afton and back.”

“Thank fucking god.”

Ah, finally, plot. I knew it would come. Up until this point, my dad had been supportive and game. He’d been willing to spend most of his Friday driving for three hours for a 90-minute train ride. (Getting him a Greenwood Grocery sandwich beforehand helped.)

But we’d just walked into a train car with no signs of air conditioning. And being trapped in a hot box is my dad’s kryptonite.

I wanted to say more, like, “thank you for going with me” and “I have so many regrets,” but our seatmates had arrived. They shoved in across the card table between us, hitting my kneecaps at least six times as they adjusted and settled into what would certainly become a continual fleshy waltz.

We smiled but didn’t say anything. I don’t know why, but that was the vibe in the car. If we’d been sitting across from the rest of my family, I’m sure we’d have chatted the whole time, but as things stood, we sat so close and made so much accidental eye contact that we had to go by NYC apartment rules: shared walls, shared noises, absolutely no acknowledgement of each other’s existence while standing in the elevator together.

I did feel comfortable, a few minutes after we left the station, saying, “It looks like there’s a car on fire ahead of us.” That felt reasonable for the whole group to be aware of.

Black soot was streaming by our window, which was already fogging up on the inside from everyone’s body heat. My dad leaned over to look. Sweat trickled down the side of his temple.

“You know, I don’t think that’s a car,” he said. “That’s soot from the steam engine.”

“Jesus.”

The 611 is one of the most powerful steam engines ever built (constructed right in Roanoke in fact), and its muscle meant it was especially good at getting freight and passengers across the Blue Ridge back in the day. But that power has to come from somewhere, and despite the clean, pasta water connotations of “steam,” these engines mainly ran on coal that then produced the (often sooty) steam. And nowadays, almost the entirety of the US rail system runs on diesel, yet another polluting fossil fuel.

“I guess it’s good we can’t open the windows after all,” I whispered to my dad, knocking against four other kneecaps in the process.

When I’d booked the trip, I’d assumed at least one of our seatmates would be a chatty train savant who would see my reaction to the ash flakes and launch into a charming lecture on the nuances of fuel sources by geography and what it really means to “encounter the sights, sounds, and sensations of steam railroading at its absolute peak,” as the Scenic Railroad website had told me when I paid $200 for our tickets to hell.

As luck would have it, that man was at the front of our car. I could see his collectable conductor’s cap and hear snippets of lovely train conversation from the folks around him (“my father was a rail man,” “I love the beautiful scenery,” “in my spare time I also collect felt-tip pens”).

As for my dad and me, plot gave us seats behind a Civil War reenactor and ardent Trump supporter, whose words hung in our end of the train like church incense. Or a stink bomb.

The halfway point for the ride was Afton, pop. 313, which is on the other side of the Blue Ridge from Waynesboro. To get there, the train goes through the modernized Blue Ridge Tunnel, right next to the original borehole that’s now a cool and slightly spooky walking trail.

For two dark minutes, our lives could have been anything. There were no fields beyond the window, no abandoned buildings, no barns, trash piles, or interstates. In the tunnel, we could be halfway to a Swiss alpine lake, a rushing river in Montana, an HVAC repair shop.

Then we popped out in a parking lot in Afton, where a few hikers looked at us like startled deer. From the outside, the train is for sure pretty cool looking, especially when it appears like the Polar Express from the side of a mountain. The pistons paw on the rails, the bullet-nose sniffs the mountain air, and some other horse-related imagery happens. The only thing that would boost the long-lost pageantry and golden age of locomotion vibes would be a man in a top hat running along the roof holding millions of dollars in a mail sack.

We paused for just long enough to consider popping the window out with an elbow and hitching a ride home, and then the train went back into the tunnel, now pulled by a vintage diesel engine from the other side.

Nothing major to report on the return trip. It was slightly shorter. I considered a humid nap. My dad continued to wilt.

As we neared the Staunton station again, a man came by to look at the AC. He was not able to fix it.

I pulled my melted father off the train and we stopped for slushies on the way home.

I am here to officially inform you that the bar can in fact be lower than the Northeast Regional over Thanksgiving. For the same price, you could be on the 611 in June, kneecap to kneecap with quiet trainheads and loud Battle of Cedar Creek reenactors. And there’s no Cafe Car. So I guess that’s good news for the next time you take the train to NYC.

I’ve spent the past week mulling over that train afternoon, thinking about all the ways it was pulled from reality. The Summer of Steam event really got to me, mainly I think because I’ve been struggling with how to bring the story back to the practical, sustainability angle. I want this story to be useful to HB readers not just as a fair warning if someone invites you on a scenic railway journey (they may be trying to murder you).

After all, train ridership is way up in Virginia (with a record 1.5 million people traveling on the Amtrak lines in 2025), and new tracks are being laid around DC for better commuting experiences from places like Richmond into the capital.

Getting people to travel by train instead of plane or car is the goal — but only if it’s a cheaper, more enjoyable experience, especially if your car engine is prone to mice attacks. And there’s progress on that for sure (great write up here). But the last time most people traveled cheaply by train because it was the option, Staunton was just becoming an industrial crossroads and the 611 hadn’t even been invented. Air conditioning hadn’t either.

So the contrarian part of me wants to offer one other practical option: rail trails.

For all the railway advancements Amtrak has made (new seats!), there’ve also been over 42,500 miles of multi-use trails created from disused rail lines. In Virginia, we have 455 miles of trail trails (including the Blue Ridge Tunnel Trail), and there’s a movement to create a rail-trail that goes across the entire US from DC to Washington State.

If you’ve enjoyed the High Line in New York, the Beltline in Atlanta, or even the Swamp Rabbit Trail in Greenville, you know the appeal.

Like any trainspotter worth their salt, I wanted to mention both opposing sets of kneecaps: the slow but tangible progress we’re seeing toward a better, more comprehensive rail system in the US, as well as the progress we’re making toward getting off the damn train completely and having a nice walk on a crushed gravel path.

Safe travels either way.

Good times at cousin camp. Next stop, the river to cool off.

💥 Juneteenth around Cville includes: a Juneteenth Jubilee and wine release party with Black Women Who Wine at Eastwood from 12-4pm today, a special Fridays After Five with Ebony Groove, and kid-friendly art activities at the Art Bar (with line dancing).

▶️ On Saturday we’ve got: The 10th annual Black Business Expo with 30+ local businesses participating, a free panel series, and a business pitch competition with a $1,500 cash prize at the Jefferson School City Center. There will also be a community parade and live music (9am-5pm).

🔨 Broken zipper, no prob: Take it to the Repair Cafe on Saturday, hosted by the Cville TimeBank from 12-4pm. It’s run by volunteers who have helped people fix lamps, hair dryers, umbrellas, bikes, banjos, and a bunch more stuff.

🏠 Historic house of the week: Monroe’s 1889 Bank Building is on the market, featuring incredible arched windows, a brand-new addition on the back, and a heat pump HVAC system (3 beds, 2.5 baths for $285k).

🏡 Cool rental of the week: Massive art colony potential here. Grab five of your besties and set up shop in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in one of six bedrooms in this 1867 Italianate masterpiece. Plus, a hot tub (6 bed, 6 bath for $4k/month in Amherst).

🌤️ Sustainable, fair, and affordable energy, sign me up: Local nonprofit C3 is running a series of webinars and a community dinner this summer to explore Cville’s clean energy transition. The intro event is on Wednesday, June 23 at noon.

💼 Job of the week: HR Generalist at East Point Energy in downtown Cville (no salary listed).

💾 Remote job: PR Manager at Oatly ($105k base).

➕ And a big congrats to UVA’s recently renovated Shannon Library, which just won a Local Leadership Award from the US Green Building Council for things like a 20% reduction in water use and 40% energy cost savings. The library is free and open for community members to use (great air conditioning too).

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