Somewhere along the rails, it occurred to me that both my brother and I have iPhones, so I shared my location with him. He said it was weirdly entertaining to watch my little Kelly face scootch across the country.
At one point, we were talking about the weather. I told him it was 58° in Minot, North Dakota. “Practically winter!” I said. He snorted (as well as you can snort by text). “It’s 70° in Mill Creek and will hit 80° by lunchtime. Winter, my ass!”
Fair enough, but I reminded him I’d just come from a string of days in the high 80s and low 90s. My internal thermostat had recalibrated. For perspective, it was 84° in Buffalo at that exact moment.
His response? “Let me call you a waaaaaambulance.”
Brothers: built-in GPS support with a side of sass.
To his credit, The Great Obiwan did provide some interesting insight. “The application of a Cartesian grid to the land leads to an interesting problem. The earth is a globe, so the longitude lines converge as you move toward the poles. So, every so many miles, surveyors have to adjust lot lines to correct for that.”
I learned something too. I chatted with a train guy (maybe a porter?). I asked about cabooses. Turns out they’re rarely used anymore. All that starting and stopping, as well as jumping on and off the car repeatedly, messed with the vertebrae of the crew. “A predictable negative health effect,” Michael said. “Like climbing poles for the phone company destroying your knees.”
