They always finish in Paris

Another brilliant Tour de France, perhaps the best in years. Four countries (Monaco -- as if that counts, Switzerland, Italy and of course La Belle France), the return of the team time trial (and its ability to blow contenders out of the race early on), and Mont Ventoux on the penultimate day. There was inter-squad squabbling that we don't normally see played out in a grand tour (it's fairly clear that Alberto Contador won't be invited to race for new Team RadioShack); the return of That Guy Who Won 7 Tours, and who did very well to place 3rd (would have been second if not for Alberto pulling the Schlecks up the hill); and all the usual pain and suffering, little victories and little defeats that make it such a compelling sport. Even the final spring on the Champs Elysees was heart-stopping. It was a great Tour if you weren't last year's winner Carlos Sastre, or last year's #2 Cadel Evans, or Tom Boonen. Some went home emptyhanded, brokenhearted, or brokenwristed (poor Levi!). The UK had its best race in years, and while the American teams did very well (Columbia shot Brit sprinter Mark Cavendish to the line 6 times, and Garmin placed Christian Vandevelde and Bradley Wiggins well in the overall), there were no American stage or jersey wins.

So now, with the very point of July gone by, we need to concentrate on the end of summer, such as it has been. My usual regret of missing the long evenings has been mitigated by the fact that it rains every night, so we ain't missing anything. A couple of more trips to plan, perhaps another brave weekend of camping, and then before we know it school will be back in, ballet will be back on, and we'll look back on this as the summer that never was.