The Trip to France
- Departure and Arrival

21 July 2000: Fly out of Chicago. This trip was a long time in coming. Karen for years had been using Sprint for long-distance, watching her Sprint Points accumulate. By the year 2000 there were enough points for a free companion ticket on Air France. That and the observation that we both had a large number of "use or lose" vacation days sealed the deal. It was, as they say, fait accompli.

Our flight was uneventful, which is more than can be said for the 113 people who were killed in the crash of the Concorde departing Paris three days after we touched down. The crash was the biggest news story for days afterwards. Trying to take in the scope of the tragedy—illustrated by vivid pictures in the papers and and video on TV—left many people a little dazed. The day of the crash several people asked us if we had seen it, even though we had spent the past three days in same place they had—hundreds of miles from that airport.