Letters! We get letters! We get stacks and stacks of letters!

Mail Day

Wandering Wheels had arranged several “mail stops” along the way (a PO box at various towns we stayed in on our trip). If memory serves correctly, every Wednesday was “mail day”. WW had denoted certain recommended cut off dates for sending mail to each particular mail stop. After dinner, WW would have the mail bundled and arranged in alphabetical order. I typically had a letter from my parents and several perfume-laden letters from Laura. My parents often included newspaper articles of the Tour de France so I could keep up on the results. Remember, I basically had no tv or radio during the 6 weeks I was on the trip. Laura wrote a letter nearly every day as well. It took a good few days but eventually a steady flow of my letters came her way. She said (after I got back home) that my letters were so detailed that it was like she was riding right along with me. My nightly letter writing became so famous that I was the subject of a Top 10 List (ala Letterman). On the next to last day, in Deleware, it’s a tradition with WW to hold a talent contest (and I’ll talk more about that in a future post). The class clowns of the trip wrote up a list of “The Top 10 Things You Could Say on This Trip That Would Result in Justifiable Homicide”. Mine was, “Telling Boo that Laura is secretly corresponding with all of the sailors on the U.S.S. Saratoga. Anyway, mail day certainly made those long miles worth while.