Chris Graduates - Finally!

My brother Chris has always been our family 'genius,' an exceptionally smart and talented kid. He just finished his PhD at Purdue in Chemical Engineering, and I made the trip home from Ireland to go to his graduation. Too important to miss! It was a great day, and really fun to be back at Purdue... was my first trip back in 10 years!! Starbucks in the Union?? The Sweet Shop restored back to its 1950's glory?? I can't believe how good the kids have it these days.. After buying armloads of new Purdue gear from the bookstore and a quick pint at Harry's, we headed out on the graduation party circuit. Chris's friends and adviser were all delightful, and it made me miss my grad school friends from Duke. Chris will now be working at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, doing something to hopefully save the world. Congrats little bro!!

Me, Kyle, and our super smart PhD brother Chris

This past weekend I traveled out to Bergamo and Milan Italy. Allison was back in the states to see Chris graduate from Purdue and the Giro d'Italia Stages 8 and 9 were on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday's stage passed near Bergamo before looping around some small mountains and returning to finish in town center. I brought my bike and rode about the last 90km of the course. I stopped at the top of the last climb and stopped on a hill for about and hour and a half 'till the peleton rolled by then finished out the course into town.

On Sunday Stage 8 was Circuit race (laps of about 10 miles) within the city of Milan. I left the bike at the hotel and rode the train out to Milan for the day. The circuit race was better as a spectator as the riders would come around every 20 minutes or so instead of only once.... At the end of the day I managed to get a spot right on the barriers leading up to the finish at the 250m mark. Would have had some great photos of the sprint finish win by Mark Cavendish but I accidentally left the camer in Movie mode so all I got was 2 seconds of blur... oh well.

I reverted to pure tourist on Monday and toured City Alta the old part of Bergamo until it was time to fly out in the evening. It was a nice old town upon a hill and the weather was great all weekend. Some photos below. Click throught the photo for more.

We went to Barcelona!

London!

After finishing up a nightmare of a work project in London over the past month, Reuben and I took a few days to tour the queen's city. It had been 15 years since I had been to London, and I forgot how BIG this city is. This time around I got away from Piccadilly Circus and Planet Hollywood... completely different experience. In addition to Westminster, Big Ben and all the favorites, we hit the Tate Modern, Borough and Spitalfields Markets (Best Jerk sandwiches ever in the Spitalfields area - see sidebar), the West End for a production of Billy Elliot, and Greenwich. We had pints in Notting Hill and witnessed a near family brawl at an Italian restaurant in Covent Garden. Excellent! Unfortunately all of the walking nearly crippled us and didn't do anything for my recovery from the project - thank goodness next weekend is Spain.

View of Tower Bridge from the Tower of London