And I thought Isaac was getting up there

Isaac's great-grandpa Peetz is 80 years old today. I gave him a call and wished him happy birthday, and he shared a story with me about how he had visited Seattle once, when he was discharged from the army -- he fought in the Pacific in WWII. In order to get home to Missouri from all the way out here, they put him and other troops on a train to Chicago, but it was an extra-long ride because the troop-train had to "defer" on the tracks to other rail-traffic. It took them 5 days to get from Seattle to Chicago, but he said he really enjoyed it because he got to see so much of the country. I just IM-ed my mom and told her about this:

Grandma Jane: You've been living out there for four years, and he's never told me this story.
Claire: Can you believe it? He must have billions of other great stories up there that he's never told anyone.

Dad and I also took a train from Chicago to Seattle once, because we are insane. Actually, we decided to make it a Spring Break trip for my senior year in college, to travel out here together and see if we should decide to go to school out here, some place so very far from everything we knew about. We stayed in what we thought would be a classy hotel almost on campus that advertised itself as "European-style". We did not know in advance that this means "without TV". So "without TV", we spent all of our vacation nights lying around and having the same conversation:

Dad/Mom (depending on the day): Should we really do this?
Mom/Dad: I don't know...it's pretty scary.
Dad/Mom: It's so far away. We won't know ANYbody.
Mom/Dad: Yeah, just the thought of it really freaks me out.
Dad/Mom: I think that means that we should do it, then.
Mom/Dad: Yeah, I think so, too.

And here we are. Many more birthdays to you, Grandpa, so we can try to eke out a fraction of the stories you've stocked away over the years.