Good morning all ... and welcome to the fifth of July!  Did you have a nice Fourth?

We did ... celebrated by competing in the Westlake Yacht Club's annual Round the Island Race* - in which the competitors must capsize their boats or lower their masts or otherwise navigate underneath a low bridge - and then watched fireworks from the back yard.  The technology of fireworks is amazing, isn't it?  Just thing of all the technology that goes into making cool visuals in the sky :)

* sorry but no, I did not win this year, some early and critical boat failures kept me way back, although I did make it under the bridge in fine style...

Onward to the Fifth! 

Among all the other cool things that are happening this weekend, yesterday saw the start of this year's Tour de France, in Utrecht, in the Netherlands.  I watched the first stage last night and am planning to watch the second in a few minutes, also in the Netherlands, between Utrecht and Zelande.  I am most definitely looking forward to this year's Tour, not only is it a most interesting route, but for the first time in a long time all the favorites are riding, and it will be a horse race among [at least] four strong riders (Alberto Contador, Chris Froome, Vincenzo Nibali, and Nairo Quintana).

Right now I've decided NOT to follow my previous practice of blogging about each of the stages.  In a weird way this is a result of my blog's Flight feature, which shows my posts on the same day in each previous year.  I've realized that old TDF posts are just not that interesting.  So ... be it.

[Update: I did accumulate thoughts and pictures throughout the Tour, which was one of the greatest ever; please see my galactic summary post for a grand report!]

Onward!