I’ve finally figured it out.  When you are a kid, you are a “dult.”  Jump above 20, and you become an adult.  If you are lucky enough to pass social security, you are an olddult.

Through all of my years, I’ve remained fascinated by trains.  When a young dult, my younger dult brother and I wandered to the tracks that carried passengers from a nearby town to a larger town nine miles away.  We didn’t call them “train” tracks, though.  We called them “traction” tracks.

And we didn’t go there to see or get on the traction car. We wandered in the sticker bushes to pick blackberries and get chiggers.  Of course, we didn’t want the chiggers, but a bucket of fresh picked blackberries delivered to our mother meant blackberry cobbler for desert that very same day.

We were careful not to walk on or too close to the tracks because the traction car could show up at any time, it seemed, and we knew it was dangerous to get close. Yet, seeing it flash by as we plucked the blackberries created a desire to ride. It never happened. Before we were old enough to earn the money to buy tickets, before we graduated from dult to adult, it disappeared.

But I was inspired by those early years and between adult and olddult, I began traveling the rails…never for business purposes, always for pleasure.  Trips though the Rocky Mountains, through the deserts, along the Pacific Ocean and down to the Southlands.

Recently, I was one of many olddults on the Canadian Rail adventure from Toronto to Vancouver. I enjoyed spectacular scenery, great food, friendly and professional Canadian rail-folks and the olddults like me that relish the click-click on the rails that can only be made by a fast train.

Try it sometime. And when you get on the train, ask the conductor when they are going to make the rooms (compartments) a little bit bigger.

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