Scattered Thoughts . . .

A few evenings ago, we visited the Waterbury train station with Lukey and Kenzie.  It was a day when I was not feeling all that well so I kept things simple in the hopes of an uneventful quick trip downtown.  I didn't bring a heavy camera bag.  I put some emergency medications in my pockets, I grabbed one camera body with one lens, and I grabbed a scanner so we could listen to the chatter on the radio as the Amtrak train approached and departed the station. Both Lukey and Kenzie were happy to be at the train station waiting for the train.  I think we all preferred to be getting on the train to head out-of-town but watching the train arrive and depart would be enough to create some smiling faces and some nice photos... The Amtrak Vermonter from Penn Station in Manhattan was running a little late this night so we had some down time.  There is a park across the street from the train station so the kids wanted to go over to the swings while we waited for the delayed Amtrak train to ar

T he weather was generally lousy while Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for a few weeks.  We didn't have many rainy days of solid rain but we had a lot of dark days with intermittent rain.  One particular day was indeed a solid rainy morning so we set up Lukey's trains in the kitchen while Gee worked from her home office.   Due to the pandemic, we converted our "train room" into Sheila's home office so we had to find another place to run Lukey's trains since Gee was working from home while Lukey and Kenzie stayed with us.   We cleared off the kitchen table and set his HO scale layout on the table.  That actually worked far better than I thought it would!  The layout hung off the end of the kitchen table but the layout itself was solid enough to handle the weight of the trains without the support of the table under the last foot of one end of the layout.  Having the train set on a table was far more comfortable than running them while the layout is placed

Back around Labor Day, Lukey came over and we brought his trains outside to the backyard.  Gee's new office is in what was the train room so we currently lack the space in the house for running trains.  Besides, bringing these trains outdoors also provides nicer backgrounds and lighting for photos. This particular day was overcast and dark clouds were moving in very quickly but we figured we had an hour or two before the rain would start.  I was not feeling all that great on this day...  I was feeling lousy enough that I vividly remember feeling lousy on this day.  I had significant breathing problems, I was nauseated and holding back vomit, and I generally felt lousy.  I also had significant spinal pain that was probably adding to the breathing problems and nausea.  We still managed to get the trains up and running in the backyard for a little while though... One of the great things about bringing the trains outdoors is that I can capture some nice photos.  The lighting is realist

Our visit earlier in the day to The Palace of Fine Arts was beautiful and, honestly, I could have spent another few hours there just shooting photos of the gardens, architecture and wildlife.  I am drawn to classic architecture and this architecture is classic, immense and not something you see often on this continent.  Additionally, there was plenty of wildlife to capture in images all day long as well.   The environment, as a whole, was peaceful and comfortable while the weather was sunny and beautiful especially since we were still mostly accustomed to the snowy, wintry weather we had departed just a week earlier.  Unfortunately, our time in San Francisco was very limited since this was just one city of many we visited during our long cross-country journey by rail.  We had a lot to fit into two short weeks so there was no lingering to be done during any of our sightseeing excursions.  Before long, we needed to get going.  We had one more thing planned for our day after walking a

Note:  I found this blog entry about the very beginning of our cross-country rail journey in my "Drafts" folder long after I had already started writing about this trip so this entry is not in chronological order with the rest of my entries about this trip.  Chronological or not, it is now finished and published. I've been very undecided about how to tackle writing about such a long trip while sharing some of the photos I shot  (I plan to share only a select few of the 8500+ photos) and even a few video clips.  For now, I decided to write mostly chronologically.  If some other topic pops up in the middle of a different topic, I may stray from this plan.   In the months leading up to this rather complex trip while planning for this once in a lifetime cross-country journey by rail, we knew that we would be traveling for a minimum of two weeks.  The plan was to squeeze in as much as possible in this relatively short period of time.  Any delays, any weather problems an