On the Road Again 2014 #5

Thursday morning, just west of Edmonton. Another beautiful day riding an on-time train. Another night of less than adequate sleep. Oh to be able to stretch out my legs!!!!!!  But life could be a lot worse.

Had a really interesting evening's conversation yesterday. Directly behind me was a self trained IT guy from Saskatoon, about 28, very bright and interesting; across from him was a man who look about 25 but in fact was 31. He was a Ph.D who was working in a hospital doing research on some very advance MTI  technology. We talked for at least two hours about technology and how it was affecting life, the state of universities in the western world ( the IT guy knew nothing about academia and was surprised how much hard work went into getting a degree and then getting tenure - and of all the risks involved in terms of ending up with no job at the end of the process); we talked about the possibilities of living to a 1,000, the wonderfulness of TED talks, critical thinking and the need to have more people in the world who both like to problem solve and knew that they could be good at it. It was an extraordinary, broad ranging conversation that quite frankly only happened because we were bright, experienced and well educated in our fields and had the capacity to generalize knowledge to other fields. It may be hard to believe but in spite of our radically different backgrounds and education - we had a lot in common. At one point we were struggling with remembering a particular fact - the IT guy had his computer hooked up to his cell phone and was, I suspect the only person on the train that had access to Wifi - so he looked it up. As I noted to the other two - there were two of us with 19-20 of combined post secondary education but our discussion was incomplete until the "uneducated" IT guy helped us out with finding the information.

At some point the two other guys started to talk about computer and programing language etc.... I reminded them that for most of the world computers at best were just fancy typewriters and  that they were talking a foreign language as far as I was concerned. They smiled indulgently and continued on with their discussion of Mac processing speed.

As the train pulled up to Saskatoon (where they were both getting off) we shook hands and remarked on what a great conversation it was. Neither of them had met each other before, but would be nice to think that they will continue our conversation some other time.

While I am missing the randomness of meeting new drivers and hearing their stories....I have met lots of people on the train. When we meet in the Dome car or outside on our scheduled walks, we continue our conversations. When near seat mates reach their destination and leave the train, it feels a little bit like one has lost a friend.







 Oh to be able to stretch out my legs!!!!!!