Asses and Amish

Jake here. 

While on the train from Salt Lake to Chicago, we learned of the “zephyr salute” which is when someone pull down their pants and moons the train as it passes by. We however were discouraged from doing the salute back to the rafters as seeing cracks on trains is usually a safety concern. Rafters on the Colorado River were happy to demonstrate as we soon learned. We were graced with plenty of butts all throughout the day even as Josh pointed out while we ate dinner with a couple Garret and Georgia that just graduated from high school and are celebrating their one year dating anniversary on our train trip. They are both going to art school in Detroit this fall studying video game design and illustration respectively. We wish them a long happy relationship!

We spent the afternoon playing cards with our new Amish friends Henry and Dan, they live in the Amish community in Whitefield, Maine. The game we played was called Dutch Blitz, an Amish card game that was fast paced and surprisingly is available for purchase on Amazon. They also have many other fun games such as Rook, Skip-Bo, Kupp or Quiots. This was my first time ever meeting someone who was Amish and they were quite friendly and welcoming and answered all of our questions about being Amish. For example did you know that the Amish community has a weekly newspaper that goes all around the country detailing births, marriages, deaths, and many other Amish news and stories. Some Amish people also follow sports as we learned from another fellow was a Kanas City Chiefs fan, and he learns how the game went by reading the newspaper. Also, the Amish were quite hilarious as they were very eager ran to the windows to see bare-bottomed rafters and would tell us jokes about how they don’t have cities or electricity. One evening we enjoyed a night of song with an Amish Family from Iowa. Some songs were in English and others in Pennsylvanian Dutch. 

Sadly we had to depart and say goodbye to our new friends once we arrived in Chicago. We spent our 3 hour layover by walking around Chicago traveling to go see Cloud Gate or as its better known “The Bean”. I finished the day by FaceTiming my wonderful girlfriend Grace which as always made my day a thousand times better. Getting to see her even virtually reminds me how much I can’t wait to see her again and play a round of Dutch Blitz with my Dutch princess. 

If you would like to email me about anything exciting happening in your life please do so at Jaketheeaglescout@gmail.com as I don’t have social media and would love to keep in the loop with the people I care about.

A selection of scenes from our travels so far: