So the trip to Brazil never materialized. At least plane tickets didn’t. That was okay with me because my broken ribs have been reverse healing. They are worse now than they were 3 weeks ago. Every little crack in the road sends a shock wave through my chest. And it has been hotter than hot here. Like really hot. And humid. The heat index is over 110 everyday. Makes for some pretty crummy bike riding. I was hoping to do the last week of Superweek, but that isn’t going to happen.

So, I guess I’m going to get on a plane and fly over to Europe for a week. At least that is the tentative plan right now. It’s kind of an in and out trip. Getting to Paris on Sunday morning and just spending a couple days in France. Then to Belgium for a few more days. I’m not too big on watching bike races live during the season, but I’m not really doing that anyway.

I think I’m going to take Bromont up to Wisconsin to let him run free in the woods while I’m gone. Highs are in the upper 70’s there and the lows are in the 50’s. I told him I would, so that is a deal. It should be nice.

I spent the majority of the time the last couple weeks redoing Mike and Judy Hudson’s bathroom. I met them when I first started racing, back in high school, so we’ve been friends for quite awhile. It isn’t completely done, but pretty done. I put electric radiate floor coils under the tile so the floor should be nice and toasty all winter. If you’re putting tile in, I would highly suggest this.

Nothing much else is going on. Here’s some photos from the past week.

There have been some crazy thunderstorms the past week driving up the humidity.

Made a wish. Maybe not as good as a four-leaf clover.

Laying tile and heating coils around the tub, steam, jacuzzi contraption.

Floor done.

Post tiling shot. A bit beat.

Went to the Mexican Feista here in town. Good people watching and food.

Saw this perfect mushroom at Mike and Judy's. Had to take a photo of it.

We went swimming yesterday afternoon and Vincent's dad (Vincent in the photo with Pascal) rode this over so we all tried it out for awhile. Pretty fun. It goes off-road well.

of another thing wrong with our sport. Below is a photo Ivan Stevic. He came over to the US quite a few years ago and “raced”. By that I mean that we sometimes could ride around with him. He was completely, obviously supercharged. Finally it came out that he was facing a lifetime ban from a raid in Italy where he was found to be distributing drugs. Now here he is racing in China. I thought we’d seen the last of him. Must of “slipped” through the cracks.

This celebration got him thrown out of The Tour de Qinghai Lake in China this week.