howeird | Reno Ad Hoc (Reply)

For most of the two hours lf while I was at the Reno station waiting for the train, my Kindle was out and I was reading from G. K. Chesterton's What I Saw in America. Credit

smallship1 for mentioning the author enough times for me to get curious enough to want to read him. Chesterton has a way with words. Several ways, in fact. I found myself laughing out loud from some of his lines, some from a clever turn of phrase and others from references which we seem to share, despite the difference in era. There is a small section about reporters vs. headline writers which was very astute, and impressed me. I did both jobs for several years, and yes, thanks to the agenda of the publisher, sometimes a headline screams something very different from what the article says.

When I entered the waiting area, the first thing I saw was a very large but shapely leg, in a black nylon stocking. The leg was so prominently displayed it appeared to be roughly the size of Oklahoma. Or perhaps Nebraska. Continuing the line of sight, it was attached to a woman in a simple yet fashionable dress, a sort of understated Harlequin design, grayish white with a pattern of black dots on the top left and bottom right, with the opposite coloring on the opposite sides. A very well-endowed pair of attributes were obvious under the dress, and the whole thing was topped off by a woman's head with fashionably short dirty blonde hair, brilliant green eyes, and a face that was a bit more tan than this past winter could have achieved naturally, and more pronounced lines of weathering than one would expect on a woman who appears otherwise to be trying to look 20 years less than her 40-something. She was with a man of about the same age, and except for a potty break each, she sat close against him, looking up at him (which is a neat trick because they are the same height) with the most energetic "this is my best I Want You expression" evah. It was totally wasted, because he obviously was thrilled to be with her, he looked like he had just won the lottery.

She kept looking over at me, and I know I know her from somewhere. It is probably a good thing that I have such a lousy memory for faces and names.

I should have stayed on the Zephyr and changed at Emeryville. The CC cars are nowhere near as comfortable, it was packed full thanks to Friday Night UC Davis kids going home for the weekend, and the Zephyr got a 20-minute start, so it did arrive there first.