A couple of months ago, we gave Mandy a present: A plain white envelope. Inside was the receipt for her ‘ticket’ to participate in the Bon Ton Roulet, a seven-day supported bike tour around the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. It’s her first trip in that direction, and more importantly, it’s her first trip out of state without parents.
We dropped her off at the train station for a late-evening departure on Thursday. She was to travel with our friend Kathy, as well as with a couple of other women cyclists from the Little Rock area. We sat with them for a bit but left before the midnight train arrived. Mandy had really been looking forward to even this part of the trip – she was by far the youngest in the group, but as the only one who had traveled on Amtrak, she was ready to provide a tour of the facilities! They sent texts from the train: they’d arrived in St. Louis a bit late, they’d left the train in Chicago, they’d used my notes to find stuff to do during their layover, they’d boarded their new train for Syracuse. Continue reading “Bon Ton Roulet”