le route verte

The guide covered all topics with a smattering of jokes.  Any questions?  Moving on.  He lead us from brick building to stone building, around fountains and quads.  And everything is named after someone.  Some of us said they felt lost, so as a group we stuck together.  My family plans more such visits around the great state in the upcoming month.  I wonder how each school will stand out.

We walked around a small town in the north of Iceland looking for pizza.  With each slippery step in the very dark night we talked about the northern lights because the sky was clouded and we were left wondering.  We also did not find pizza.  But just to be out walking in the cold air, unguided, was our reward on a tour designed for high schoolers.  My wife and I went along not as chaperones but as curious tourists invited by our daughter, so we felt lucky to be there.  Everyone I've ever met who has visited this place loves it.  I am now part of that group. 

In Montreal the bus driver kindly let us on without a ticket.  I'd pushed us around the city on foot perhaps too far into the heat of the afternoon, which I'm known to do.  But I pushed us for a reason:  biking out of Montreal and into the Cantons, aka our main event, was scheduled to begin the next day, and I was nervous about the physical six-day challenge.  Thank you to that bus driver, to all the tour guides everywhere (though you especially Nick), and to the Route Verte for a fabulous '24 of adventuring.  It's only July but I have art shows in September and November and I have much work to do.