Nevada Southern Railway

had their annual Santa Claus train run, and yes, the Boy knew all about it. So we hiked on over to Boulder City, turned left at the A&W, and found the train.
The boy was quite pleased. More with the train than Santa, I think, but when asked, the Boy admitted that he liked Santa. Not that that helped Santa any, when he came by ho-ho-hoing the Boy just sat there not looking and Santa glanced at me and I just mouthed "Thank you" and they went on their Santa way. That's usually how it is in public situations with lots of people and there's no time for patience and pulling communication from autistic boys. It's nice that the didn't ignore him, it really is. The sad part is that the boy seems to ignore, but he may not be. He may really want to pull the beard or ask for the Lincoln Log Sawmill Express or who knows what, but he doesn't do or say it. I don't know if he gets flustered, or he's shy, or if it really is autism and he has nothing to say, but there are times when, if he really wants to let you know something, he makes sure you know (i.e. Lincoln Logs Sawmill Express:the websites, the Ebay sites, the pictures printed from the websites, the in-your-face asking almost daily), but even that is brought forth at least verbally with significant prompted effort.

So the train makes a trip, out and back, a distance one way of about a half mile. We sat in a car similar to the one pictured behind the Boy, which is an open car with benches down the middle, to sit back-to-back with total strangers and gaze at the beautiful Nevada scenery. We sat on the sunny side, which turned out to be a good thing since it was a rather brisk day but the sun made it quite bearable. The boy wanted to ride it again, but there was quite a crowd waiting already, so we came home. We'll probably catch it again in the spring.

(I had to cajole him to smile more, urm, normally, since usually when you ask him to smile for a photo, he grimaces, showing all his teeth and gums like a chimpanzee. He actually looks kinda happy here, though.)