Riding with a Carriage Tour driver was something I have wanted to do all summer, and today was the day.  I had asked if I could ride with Justin Diemert, the young man who was driving the 3-horse hitch carriage the day I took a nose dive off my bike in front of him.  I got my wish!  Who better to showcase than Justin, who, as far as I’m concerned, saved me from serious injury, and possibly saved my life.

A little about how the Carriage Tours work.  Downtown on Main Street there is a booth where tourists can purchase tickets for Carriage Tours.  That is where you are loaded onto a 20-passenger carriage.  Group tours also start their sightseeing trip from there.  Once you are underway, the driver gives a narrated tour through the downtown area of Mackinac Island – covering the main attractions on Main and Market Streets.  From Market, they turn up Cadotte, go past The Grand Hotel and the horse barns, and at the bottom of the hill that our condo sits atop, they take a slight right and go up to the Surrey Hill Carriage Museum.  There they unload and spend 15-20 minutes in the museum – looking at the carriages, going through the shops, or having ice cream, or fudge, or a sandwich (if you get there around 9:30 in the morning, you may be lucky enough to get piping hot donuts that are to die for).

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"You flip this lever to loosen it and then move the seat," I said. The 49-year-old college instructor was riding his bike on 57th Street just over a year ago when he was run over and killed. David Julius Bendt pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced last week to 100 days in jail. No, the point is that Kevin Rogers died on his bicycle when he was doing everything right. The boy, about 11 or 12, watched intently then thanked me. He spoke with the hint of an African accent, the lilt of a boy raised on English but with a remnant of his parents' homeland, abandoned in the face of war or famine, or both. There were 75 accidents reported to the Sioux Falls Police Department last year involving bicycles or tricycles or any other type of pedicycle. Rogers was the one who died.

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