The 2008 Tour de France ends today. I watched the end of 5 or 6 stages, but then DirectTV dropped the VS channel from our package. It was cool to see 2 US based teams this year: Team Columbia and Garmin Chipotle. They are both new teams that did better than expected. One of my favorites, George Hincapie rides for Team Columbia. Levi Leipheimer, another favorite, didn’t ride this year because his team, Astana, didn’t get invited (doping issues). Cadel Evans, an Aussie, 2nd place overall last year, was expected to win, even until yesterdays time trial. All he had to do was make up ~85 seconds over a 30 mile individual time trial. He was only able to shave off 30 seconds from Carlos Sastra, so he won’t be winning this year.

This is a HUGE week for work. A multi-billion$ selling drug we haven’t had access to is FINALLY coming off patent. We have a generic version that is expected to be approved by the FDA this week which we could, if approved, start selling on Friday. It’s our 29,000 employee company’s most important development this year, so there is a lot riding on it.

Grace did the 2 week drama camp again this summer. Tonight is their performance of Charlotte’s Web. Grace is playing Avery, Fern’s brother and has a duet. She went to the camp with her triplet friends.

Yesterday we met some Portland friends at Manhattan Beach for a few hours. Shannon and I got fried. Gavin (10) made daddy proud: Civil War, an obscure Guns N Roses song was playing on KROQ, so I asked him to name the guitar player. Without hesitation he said, “Slash”. Tom Morello is his favorite guitar hero. A highlight from the trip to Canada was when all three kids were “singing” along to Morello’s guitar solo in Audioslave’s “Be Yourself” (waWawaWawa…). Priceless.

Lake Shasta is the lowest I’ve ever seen it in the ~16 years of driving by it. Hopefully they will get all the fires in the area contained BEFORE we head up there later this summer to go houseboating.

Intel has a few manufacturing plants in the Portland area and employs ~6000 people in the area. Most of the people I knew who worked there hated it, but a huge perk they get is a 3 month sabbatical every 7 years. We’ve had 2 friends and their families stop in and staywith us this summer while they were on sabbatical. We love entertaining guest!

I’ve been going up to Portland ~one week per month since we moved to help cover. This MAY be the last trip (heard that before) and since school is out I brought the family. It was lots of fun hanging out with friends. From there we drove up to the Seattle area to visit Shannon’s brother on the 4th of July.

Next stop was British Columbia where we spent a week with Shannon’s parents. We had a great time hanging out at the beach, eating fish and chips, playing games, kayaking, etc. The Vancouver aquarium has a baby beluga whale. It’s very cute. I watched the 10 episode DVD Long Way Round there with Dylan. It follows Ewan McGregor (Obi Wan Kenobi) and his buddy on a motorcycle ride around the world. They start in London, go thru Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, Kzysackstan, Mongolia, then, after the road of bones in eastern Russia, they flew to Anchorage, Alaska. They rode across Canada and the US to finish up in NY, escorted on the final stretch by the guys from Orange County Choppers. It’s very cool, but the language is bid rough.

A few years ago I took the kids camping in BC on one of our trips. One of my favorite spots was Harrison Hot Springs. It’s this cool little town right on a beautiful lake. This year we did a day trip back there. They have 2 or 3 professional sand castle building competitions there every year. The latest round was still standing and pretty spectacular. On the way back I got my tweek on and drove STRAIGHT THRU: 22 hours from BC to So Cal. We were planning on stopping in Northern CA somewhere, but I was “in the zone” and just kept rolling. We stopped for an hour in Portland (friends and Best Teriyaki) and 30 minutes in Redding (first In-N-Out you hit going south). Got back in time to spend the morning with some friends from Portland.

My nephew Jake got his mission call to Peru yesterday!! He is very excited. His brother JT gets back from Japan ~5 days before he leaves, so he will get to see him before he enters the MTC.