2014.12.14 Santa Train
Before the Santa Train, we had the O'Leavey-Awabdy's and the Kawaguchi's over for some festive snacks. Watching Simon with his long-time buddies 'Zan and Cole made it easy to imagine how somebody came up with the idea for Power Rangers, or Voltron. Or Kaiju. Each is a formidable terror on their own; but combined, their energies actually go exponential. Both awesome and terrifying, in a this-also-explains-Xanax™ sort of way.
The train itself is a quaint piece of nostalgia. Not just because of Santa Claus on board, delivering candy canes. SP&S #700 is a quaint piece of 1938 engineering. Not as stylish as the art-deco 1941 train they also run some years, but still a 5000 HP boiler weighing 440 tons.
Afterwards, we all went just a few blocks to the Muddy Rudder, where the kids all danced around like idiots to some live fiddles and flutes. It's quite a thing to see: kids on a candy cane fueled sugar rush failing to Highland Fling.