E Dock St Terror!

On the gorgeous morning of July 18, I walked most of E Dock St, starting from 4th and Pacific. While standing in a parking lot taking photos of the Old City Hall clock tower, I suddenly jumped out of my skin at the most horrendous, percussive sound I had ever heard. The ground shook, the telephone wires were humming and I thought, Oh, no! A terrorist bomb has gone off and the debris may strike me in the next split second! It took me a long moment to realize that what I had just experienced was nothing more than the sound of train coupling on the Burlington Northern railroad across the street. The jamming together of boxcars occurred a track or two in from the street, so I had no warning; the railroad cars I could see were motionless. I mentioned it later to my friend, RT, who works in Tacoma's port area. He chuckled and said that where he works they hear that sound on an hourly basis. I salute you if you work near Tacoma's rail lines and have had to get used to that crashing thunderclap of a noise; it would take me a long time.



P. S. There is a very clever geocache hidden in the marina area off E Dock St. There is another cleverly hidden geocache at the Museum of Glass.