All good things must come to an end, the saying goes. Don’t know who coined it, but, sadly, person was right. My vacation is over, just got home lat night. Funny thing about vacation is you take it in order to rest, recharge batteries, but when it’s over you feel more tired than before. This crazy thought goes through my mind that I have to start working in order to rest after vacation. Major difference is, that this is GOOD tired, as opposed to the one induced by work.

Did a lot of traveling, went through 12 countries, but none of it was rushed, rather a relaxing, leisurely travel. Most of the time was spent in the Mediterranean basin, with longest stay on Cyprus. Something I always wanted to do was to catch a glimpse of Tour de France. No intentions to follow entire event, this is an adventure of its own, but decided to witness couple of stages.

Just like it was mentioned in comments to last post, I managed to join the race in Verbier, Switzerland, finish of stage 15. Weather was great, so was the crowd and for all practical purposes the race was decided there, too. Guess my choice of venue was right. After that our group watched the race on the pass of Grand-Saint-Bernard, on Swiss-Italian border. I think this was the highest point of the race. At any rate, watching this on TV doesn’t really give the high mountains a justice. The perspective of elevation is simply not there. However, when you are at a foot of the mountain in person and look up, you can’t help but scratch your head and think “They are going to get there on bikes?” Seems really nuts.  What is even more crazy, is going over the top and start the decent. Speeds are insane, said to reach 70mph or even more.

These long climbs are very interesting. Fans get within inches of the riders, sometimes even touching them. Noise reaches levels of a sports stadium and it goes on for miles. It is very impressive in person, very easy to get into spirit of things. Some people take it very seriously and make a pilgrimage every year to watch the Tour. I talked to some of them. Interestingly enough, they focus on mountain stages. Seems it is logistically next to impossible to follow entire route, due to road closures etc. So the fanatics camp out on mountains and have great time, just like I did. This whole experience was very enjoyable. As a strange footnote, I watched two stages of Tour de France without going to France.

First two weeks I didn’t really pay attention to currencies, other than what was in my wallet. This week, however, I made it a point in looking at charts once a day. Kind of like “breaking myself in”, before engaging in serious trading. That will have to start tomorrow. Hope I’m not too rusty.  After all,  3 weeks in Europe left me nearly broke. Have to make some money in order to…. do it again.

Mike K.
P.S. Thank you for all the comments to last post.