Tour de France stage 12: Another flat stage with a couple of small bumps along the way. Girmay snatched his third stage win in a bunch sprint. Roglic crashed and lost some time on his GC rivals; dropping him to 6th place from 4th. No other changes in the GC standings. One more flat stage tomorrow.
Tour de France stage 11: A long (210 kms) and hard (4100m climbing) stage that tested the top 4 riders of this tour. During the 4 climbs in last 50 kms, Tadej and Jonas went head-to-head in a thrilling battle with Jonas winning the stage. Remco and Primoz couldn’t keep up and lost time.
Underside of the Gold Star Memorial bridge over Pequot (aka Thames) river near New London, CT.
Reminded me of this when I saw a photo posted by Pratik.
Tour de France stage 10: After the rest day, today’s stage was pancake flat. After many unsuccessful attempts last week, Jasper Philipsen finally won a sprint that was perfectly executed by his team. Good to see the winner of green jersey from last year grab a stage win. No change in GC rankings.
Someone whom I have known since she was 2 years old, graduated with a Ph.D. in Economics and starting off her career. Congratulations to her but this makes me feel old. 😂😂😂
Tour de France stage 9: what an exciting day with so much action on the gravel sections of the route today! Tadej Pogacar tried to put his opponents in difficulty to gain time on them but was not successful. Jonas and Remco must be relieved. Turgis from Total Energie team won his first ever stage. Great effort by Jasper Stuyvent that came up short at the end.
Tour de France stage 8: Biniam Girmay won another sprint stage with a few little climbs on the way. Abrahamsen captured the maximum possible KOM points and consolidated his lead in the Polka dot jersey competition. Sadly, Mads Pedersen did not start today due to injuries from a couple of days ago. No change in GC standings.
Tour de France stage 7: on the first of two time trials, World Champion time trial it’s Remco Evenepoel handily beat everyone else and solidified his 2nd place in general classification. Two more stages before the first rest day on Monday.
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.