more training

Nostalgia is interesting.

I was under the impression I was on a train to Olympia.  It appears I am a time traveler.

When I switched trains in Portland, my head took me back almost sixty years ago.  Under these same awnings in 1955, I was about to take a trip that would open a new world to me.

As far as I know, I had never left Oregon before that trip to Detroit.  I am not even certain I had even been to Portland.  As a logging family, our idea of a long trip was going to Gravel Ford or Sitkum.

But there I was.  Amongst it all.   Surrounded by a new world.  Busy people.  Heading to exotic locations or on business trips.  Or just doing their jobs.
 
And, of course, there were the locomotives.  With their grumbling diesels.  Whose whistles in the night would transport a boy in his dreams to far away places.  Knowing he would one day go there.

That boy is now back on that same platform.  Having been to far more places than he could have imagined six decades ago.

And ready to see many more.