Chapter 23

Thankfully, my flight from Montreal didn’t leave until late afternoon. I would not have to get on to road too early; eight o’clock would be early enough. No waking up at four in the morning as I had had to do on more than one trip to Europe. I left the house on a beautiful summer morning, pulling the first tomato of the summer off the vine on the way out the door. This drive to northern New York State and across the St. Lawrence River at the Thousand Islands was always very relaxing for me: very little traffic, and a beautiful entrance to Canada as you looked down from the bridge at the many islands at the beginning of the river. As I drove north I picked up a station that was doing a retrospective on Frank Sinatra. Not normally my thing, but listening to many of the songs I had grown up with helped me to relax and not think too much about the totally different world I was about to cross into.