Wednesday - Friday, July 21 - 23 2010 (diary)

To quote one Tour de France commentator : "fair play has been thrown out off the window!. A few years back when the German rider Ulrich and the American Lance Armstrong were battling it out in the mountains each would wait for the other when one had a mechanical or accidental mishap. A tremendous demonstration of good sportsmanship of two true champions under enormous pressure to win.

But not this time!! The Spaniard Contador is clearly not of the same moral caliber as conclusively demonstrated this week. When his serious rival Andy Schlecht had a mishap with his bicycle chain and had to stop at a critical show down point in the race, Contador took immediate unfair advantage and took off like a rabbit, stealing 40 valuable seconds plus the yellow jersey from the tenacious Belgian. Contador also just managed to keep up with Schlecht during the final mountain stage, but once again in a rather cowardly fashion. He will probably win this year's Tour, but there will forever remain a nasty slur over his attitude as a true sportsman.

Thursday evening we celebrated Christmas in July with a dinner before bridge with the Palmerston Bridge Club. About 20 of us enjoyed the meal and play afterwards. It was my last game for the next two months.

These last 2 or 3 years my hearing has strongly deteriorated (a common occurence amongst several of my anscestors) and my joke that "I was never listening to anybody anyway" has become a bit thin. So this week I applied for an hearing assessment by the National Hearing Agency. There is a 6 weeks waiting list for appointments so I will have my test and hearing aid shortly after my return to Australia in October.

Saturday & Sunday, July 24 & 25 2010 (diary)

Saturday was the opening of an exhibition of silver and gold jewelry by Eric Nunn (a fellow bridge player) in the Art and Craft section of the Darwin Museum. Eric works mainly with opaque gemstones like, laps lazuli, malachite, etc. and his pieces are of nice clean contemporary designs. One of his friends had done the layout and display which were absolutely magnificent. I would surely have bought one of his pieces, but for the rather small sizes of them. They would need to be 1.5 to 2 times larger to sattisfy my personal more expansive European taste.

I have cleaned up my cabin, done the last spot of washing and other chores before taking off for 2 months. I have packed up and am just about ready to go. Watch out Europe, here I come!