I wonder if Dane, the 20-something snowboarder who had his picture taken with Shawn White in Vail, will finish his nursing degree after his return to Upper Peninsula Michigan? And what can one learn from a quantum spirituality author?

These are just a couple of the questions Gretchen and I are left with after our recent trip to Colorado on Amtrak.

The source of these questions is the community seating policy in the Amtrak dining car, one of our favorite features of an Amtrak journey because each meal offers an opportunity to meet someone you might never encounter otherwise.

We boarded the train at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, on a snowy, very cold February evening and moments later we were seated with a handsome, dark-haired Iowa farmer who was commuting to Omaha to spend the weekend with his wife and daughter.

His daughter has cancer and his wife stays with her in Omaha. He rides Amtrak every weekend to be with them. As we lingered over a delicious chocolate cream puff dessert, he told us that he was finishing a new home to replace one that been rendered uninhabitable when a neighboring dairy operation burned a pile of moldy hay on a day when the smoke lingered for hours, saturating his house.

He farms more than 1,000 acres, much of it rented land, with the help of a hired man. As we left the table, we expressed our wishes for his daughters recovery. And we lingered a few more minutes to see photos of her on his smart phone.

At breakfast the next morning, we were seated with a bespectacled couple who welcomed us with smiles and introduced themselves as Pam and Jim. We learned in the course of our conversation that Pam is a life coach and they were traveling to San Francisco to buy a house for her daughter, who is growing vegetables somewhere in northern California and plans to start a community-supported agriculture business.

Jim said after we gave some background on our families that he shared our sons interest in sculpture. His grandfather, Gutzon Borglum, was the sculptor of the presidents on the Mount Rushmore Memorial. Pam and Jim live in the Black Hills of South Dakota, but he also manages a large ranch in Texas inherited from the other side of his family.

Jim asked for the address where he could view our sons artwork. And Pam was curious about our journalism background, so Im to send a sample of columns, perhaps this one.

On the way home, we were seated at breakfast with Dane, whose shy grin was framed by a gray hoodie, and the spirituality author, an articulate man with graying hair, a stubble beard and engaging smile. Dane told us over our grits, eggs, bacon and toast, that he had been in Vail for six months, but his job tuning skis and boards was not fulfilling and he was headed home to return to college.

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SKOL: Riding the rails is never dull