Up and out early this morning with a 7:00am ride the Charles de Gaulle International Airport for the flight back home. I am pleased to report this was a very uneventful day, with our flight leaving pretty much on time and arriving in Detroit a bit early.

By the time we cleared Customs and Border Protection, all our luggage awaited us on the carousel. Our driver was also there (we had pre-ordered a ride), which meant we got out pretty quickly. No traffic home, and here we are!

Our oldest daughter Kim watched the house for us while we were away and greeted us with homemade chocolate chip cookies as well as homemade pizza. Both were good (especially the cookies), which we appreciated.

When we do trips of this sort, we tend to reflect on what we enjoyed about the trip (other than the great company). All four of us felt we had some great experiences and saw lots of things. Could we have packed more in? Sure! But we felt the balance, given our individual as well as collective situations, was spot on. (It is fair to say that setting aside my dislocated shoulder, from a health perspective, I'm in a much better place than everyone else.)

Even so, I mentioned to the group that I felt as though I left something undone. Not so much in Paris, but the Camino. I've been working on this since prior to Covid. (It is amazing how much life happens.) To have to set it aside after 4 days was hard, even though my ride buddy and I were starting to get concerned about the days we had left. I would very much have liked to continue, though the health professionals advised against it. ("NO!" was the very clear answer when I asked if I could continue riding.) While I rode for a day and a half with the injury, the likelihood of it getting worse was certainly there, and I don't want to live the rest of my life (however long that may be) with a bum shoulder.

Yes, I have been considering another go at this. Not in 2027 (we already have a lot of travel plans), but maybe 2028? Hard to say. Though I can say my ride buddy and I are a lot smarter when it comes to this, so who knows?

Finally, I want to thank everyone for joining me on this journey, as well as those that contributed to the Warriors to Lourdes Fundraiser. I know over $5000 was raised through the effort. I plan to contact Knights of Columbus Charities to see if possibly they can give me an idea. Having now been to Lourdes, I understand why the Knights of Columbus and the Archdiocese for Military Services, USA, sponsors the pilgrimage every spring.

We purposely scheduled nothing for today as we knew travel day (tomorrow) would also be an "up early" day. We’ve been doing quite a bit of cooking in the apartment, as three of the four of us like to cook.

Pretty much everything we had left by way of food went for breakfast. That was taken care of in fairly short order.

Today looked to be a fairly nice day, so we spent most of the morning and early afternoon walking in and around the area, enjoying the weather, buying a few items for family and friends back home, and noticing more than a few police a few blocks from our apartment which we assumed was part of an effort to control a demonstration somewhere in the area (which we did not see). Things seemed mostly calm, though we took our treasures back to our apartment before setting out for an afternoon meal. Then, back to the apartment to pack up for the journey back home.