I woke up this morning to the sound of a distant train whistle.  When the sound of the whistle is in the distance, it's kind of a whimsical and romantic thing - I remember listening to the sound from the lines in Cincinnati that you can hear usually late at night.  But then, I came to the startling realization that I can now distinguish between the whistle of Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Canadian Pacific locomotives...  Oh my gosh, I'm becoming a train nerd.  Moreover, I was mortified to find myself wondering, "What does the whistle of a Union Pacific or a Great Lakes Central engine sound like?"

Over the next few days I have to pass my behind-the-wheel CDL drivers test.  The going-forward-down-the-road stuff is easy.  However there are several backing maneuvers that I'm worried about getting right - you have to be able to back a 60' trailer straight for 100 yards; you have to back the trailer into a more-or-less parallel slot; you have to back the trailer into a lane-change dock (kind of like the parallel parking idea). I used to back boat trailers and farm equipment occasionally when I was young.  So passing my driving skills test will require some luck and prayer.  When I pass the test off, I can get started with a more suitable job.

Tomorrow I will be covering for a driver who's out for a few days.  The job is shuttling crews around in the marshalling yard (this is an area several miles long by about a half-mile wide with many tracks and switches where they configure trains). The good thing about this role is that you get a set schedule and a guaranteed 8 hours of work per day, as opposed to this wait-on-the-board nonsense and hope you get enough runs to fill the day.  We'll see how it goes.

The sun was finally out today for the first time in a week.  It was so nice to feel the warmth and not have to wear a coat.  The river here is very high due to the heavy rains - people are worried about flooding.  In 2011 Minot had a bad flood that pretty much devastated the center of town.  That isn't expected, but lighter sporadic flooding is more likely.

Signing off - greetings to all.

I was out in Stanley ND last night assisting a crew.  The sky was clear, there was no moon, and you could see no less than a billion stars.  I stopped counting after a billion.  Then, I noticed to the north that there was some faint light in the sky that I first thought was some kind of reflection from the locomotive lights.  Then I realized that the light display in the sky I was enjoying was an incident of the "Aurora Borealis" or Northern Lights.  This is a natural light display caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere.  As I lingered, I noticed that there were eerie colors of greenish yellow and reds that I don't think I had ever seen before.  I wondered, as I watched the lights changing, how people could deny the existence of a supreme being who placed all this beauty into organization.  It made me feel grateful for my life and for my knowledge of God and his plan.  I wished I had a camera that could capture the phenomena.

Speaking of phenomena, I have never understood the appeal for deer to congregate along the sides of the highways.  Are they hoping to get a ride to a place where the grass is greener?  Are they merely the quadruped "scientists" or dreamers who desire to develop their own vehicles for travel and are intrigued with human ingenuity?  (Lacking the benefit of opposable thumbs, I think this is a stretch.)  Perhaps they are the performers or dancers who need a smooth stage on which to perform.  What ever the reason, I have developed a procedure for clearing them from the roadways at night.  Deer in the road is one of the biggest hazards for drivers.  I honk the horn at random times to alert, startle, and scatter the deer from the path of my SUV.  It seems to work.  But then I was getting bored with just hitting the horn in random blasts, so I have taken to blowing the horn to the rhythm of certain hymns like "High on a Mountain Top", "Let us all press on", and the fanfare to "God of our Fathers".  After careful experimentation and testing, I have concluded that deer would not be good Latter-Day Saints because they hate hymns.