TGIF - I Really Need A Friday

It's been hard with Chickie on vacation and I'm dragging a bit. But there's light at the end of the tunnel and she comes back early next week. In the meanwhile there's the end of the Tour de France to look forward to and that entails both Friday and Saturday in the Alps for the final two stages of high mountain attacks, steep hairpin curves on the declines, and lots of danger and great watching. Yup - I'm still an addict of Le Tour after all these years.

Just look at these glorious mountains. Today's stage will
be a delight to watch and listen to. 

Today's stage keeps us in the big mountains finishing atop La Toussuire. Four major peaks today, in a short (138km) ride:  1533m Col du Chaussy (Cat 1); 2067m Col de la Droux de Fer (HC) a monster right in the middle of today's ride; 1638m Col du Mollard (Cat 2); and ending at the top of 1705m La Toussuire (Cat 1). The grades are steep, the roads up are long, and it promises to continue to be a series of attacks by Contador, Nibali and Quintano against Froome who still comfortably wears the Yellow Jersey. Tomorrow we end on Alpe d'Huez - SQUEE - I can hardly wait!

This is typical of the Alps. Look at the hairpin turn in the
main field of focus. Then look to the left. You can see bits of
three earlier hairpins in this picture. Beastly! Wonderful! 

I managed to get my standard Thursday workout in yesterday, although it hurt initially. Thanks for all of the kind wishes. My back seems better today and today is a swimming day, so time to stretch it out in the water. I also have to drop by the wall paper store and order three larger samples of papers I'm thinking about for my hallway and entry way. Once I've got those and a decision has been jointly made, I'll order the paper and schedule Mike to come by for installation. I suspect the wall paper install will actually be later in the fall - September or even October. But at least we're progressing with the shelving for the pantry and that should be complete by the end of next week.

In the morning, this large machine began destroying the
street and sidewalk of my next door neighbor. 

By midday, the machine had moved closer to me. This
was the view from my front door. *sigh*

Happy Friday everyone! I'll be at the store watching the machines of Mordor destroy and dig up the sidewalk in front of my entryway. It'll be an interesting week or two *sigh*.