We Blink....and it's October

Another day, another commute.  It’s early, before dawn, and the grind continues. 

But at the moment the train around me slides through the chilly rain, the only noise the sound of steel wheels as they sheen along wet, curved rails, and the distant sound of the air horn from the head end over a background white noise of the conditioned air blowers inside.  I woke from an early morning nap to find nearly 80 other people in this car and none of them is making a sound.  

There’s something wonderful about riding a train as the world outside wakes under a curtain of rainfall.

Yes, it's a sort of grind working for operations on a big railroad.  But it's also a dream long chased to be working for a railroad at all, let alone in a job that allows me to create a vision and staff a department for the future.  

The long break in posts has seen a truly remarkable summer and fall.  We had visits to Central New York, Canada, and South Carolina with the kids, while hosting family from Australia for a week between those trips.  We visited Pennsylvania overnight on separate trips, hosted operating sessions and set up nights for a traveling group, hosted an 80th birthday party for my mother in law, and this was all while I was intimately involved with the NJ Transit 40th anniversary celebration and the three major weekend events that were part of it.  Oh yeah, and the book manuscript for the next Kalmbach Yard Book is due in November!

All of this stuff in reality is the stuff of dreams, things I wished I could have done at different times of my life - and now they are happening.  And so 'the grind' from that perspective is a wonderful and fulfilling thing.  The Grind translates into 'Living the Dream.'  

Thanks for being along as part of it!