Tour de France stage 6: Another flat day without much action except the sprint at the finish line where Dylan Groenewegen beat out all the other sprinters to win the stage.
Tour de France stage 5: OMG!!! Finally, Mark Cavendish got the 35th stage win that he was seeking for the last couple of years. Now, he holds the record for the most TdF stage wins. That’s great! Can’t wait to watch the highlights this evening. So happy for Cav. This just made my day!!!
Tour de France stage 4: It was a short but hard stage in the mountains with lot of climbing. Tadej Pogacar showed everyone how good his fitness is. He made a move on the last bit of Galibier climb to drop everyone and built on that lead during the downhill to the finish ahead of Remco & Jonas.
A couple of days ago, I posted this photo that captured the star trails in the sky and firefly trails on the dark background of trees. It is not great but, I like it and hence posting it again.
Switched up my morning routine and did some strength training today. Now, arms and shoulders are hurting but feels good. Should plan to add more strength exercises to my routine.
Tour de France stage 3: On this flat stage - made for sprinters - first stage win at TdF for Biniam Girmay from Eritrea. This is historic as Biniam is the first person from Africa to win a stage at TdF ever! He is only 24 yrs old so, hopefully many more wins will be added to his name in the future.
Tour de France stage 2: It was great to see Romain Bardet win the first stage and riding in the yellow jersey considering that he recently announced that this will be his last tour de France. Winner on the second day is also a frenchman from Arkea team. First 2 days were full of hard climbs which seemed like a departure from the usual start with flat sprint kind of stages at the beginning of the race.
Enjoying this wonderful gin from Japan that wife brought from her trip last year. Low on juniper but high on citrus. Really nice with tonic water.

Star trails and firefly trails

I always wanted to make images like this but never got around to it. This is a stack of about a hundred 8 second exposures taken with Nikon Z6 attached to a 40mm lens at f/4. Now that I have one, there will be many such photos on here.
Tour de France stage 1: Mark Cavendish is in trouble on the first climb. There are five more to go. Hope he recovers on downhills and flat sections. I’d like to see him get that stage win he is seeking to make the record, then he’ll retire happily.
Looking forward to 3 weeks of racing!!!
Two head-to-head matchups worth watching tonight and they are scheduled to be at the same time: India-England in the World Cup T20 and Biden-trump in the first debate. Will have to set up 2 screens to cover both. Correction: I was wrong about timings. Ind-Eng match will be finished hours before the debate.
Only 3 more matches left in this T20 World Cup. Tour de France starts on the same day (Sat 6/29) as the World Cup final. It will be time for Wimbledon soon after. Then the Olympics will start in August. With so much sports action to follow and watch, there is no time for any other media consumption.
Happy Summer Solstice, folks in the northern hemisphere! Glad that it is the longest day and from tomorrow the days get shorter. Nice!
This was the hottest day of this year so far. I went bike riding and did a metric century on Farmington canal heritage trail.





As the election season comes closer, I am looking to cut out even the 15 minutes of news that I get during my morning commute. Found a radio station run by students at Connecticut College in New London. Music was good this morning.
Looking at the weather prediction for this upcoming week… it is nice to see that we are in that “place to be” sliver of southeastern CT. Hopefully, this prediction will turn into reality as the week progresses.

Went bike riding on some new roads on this Father’s Day. Such a perfect day to ride!!! It was high 50s when I started and 70F when I ended around noon. Couldn’t ask for a better day. These wild flowers are part of an effort to maintain habitats for pollinators.



Today’s Sun: A new large sunspot AR3712 has appeared on the Sun over the last few days. Hope it has the firepower to generate some Auroras.

A really long bike ride is in the plans for Juneteenth holiday. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.