Knight's Head

When passionate train lover Dale Connors boards the California Zephyr for the railway journey of his dreams, he isn’t expecting anything but a peaceful, quiet, working vacation. He certainly isn’t planning on a romantic rendezvous with a certain brunette – it just works out that way when he can’t stop thinking about her.

He can’t stop thinking about a lot of things – Dale is a genuine neurotic. Shy, indecisive, anxiety-ridden, he over-thinks everything and as a result loses opportunity after opportunity. Even after many, many years of therapy, his unhappiness remains the central quality of his character. Drinking is his only release from his constant worrying; drinking, or vicariously throwing a wicked fastball.

He is still mourning and trying to understand the suicide of his best and only close friend, fourteen years after the tragic morning that Joe, an alcoholic, took his life. Yet, Dale still reaches out, however hesitantly, for that human connection. Will he find it with the voluptuous and animated Terry? The trip from Denver to San Francisco and back again gives Dale ample time to contemplate the many stories of his life, stories of family, friendship, sorrow, and lost dreams of a fastball.