Scenes From A Train: Breakfast

At breakfast today we sat with the amiable high school teacher/coach Jeff and the irrepressible Dr Jordan, an 80-something radiologist whose father was the king of vidalia onions. 

Need I say more about the random threads that come together during a train trip?

Soon there was talk of positron emission tomography and HAIDA scans, nuclear medicine, and radioisotopes. Over scrambled eggs and bacon we learned the arc of Dr Jordan's radiological career, which began before CT scans and continues today.  "Imagine!" said he, "that we've come all this way and today I can read an image on my iphone!"

We were fairly captivated learning the vidalia's history:

During the tough days of the Great Depression, farmers had high hopes of a new cash crop. These hard-working men had grown everything from corn to cotton in Georgia’s sandy soil, and onions seemed to hold some promise of better profits. Imagine their surprise and concern when what grew was not an instant money-maker but a strange onion that wasn’t hot!

 Only on the train...