July 23, Paris

This blog is not going to get any more interesting. I envisioned it as a means of documenting my pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostela and a possible source of information to others who might undertake the hike, but I now have to resign myself to the fact that the pilgrimage is not going to happen. In the first week, my sciatic nerve problem seemed to improve rapidly, and I talked myself into believing that I soon would be shipshape, but I've reached a plateau in my recovery, and things are not going to improve quickly from here on. I still walk with a slight limp.

I'll continue the blog as a personal journal of the trip, but to anyone looking for anything interesting to read, I suggest looking elsewhere.

The weather in Paris is cold and wet today, and there are more rain showers in the forecast. For tomorrow we are promised partially cloudy skies for the grand finale of the Tour de France with temperatures up into the 60s. By the end of next week, the temperature is supposed to reach the upper 70s.

I generally go to bed early and am awakened several time during the night by my roommates dragging in after midnight. Last night the guy above me not only came in late, but after an hour of lying quietly, he turned on the light above his bunk and began moving around, opening and closing zippers, and shaking the bed as if he were rearranging everything in his pack. Finally, I asked him to be quiet so we could sleep, and he settled down to watching a video on his laptop computer. I believe I mentioned that he sleeps with his computer in his bunk and turned on.

I finally met one of my other roommates,  a Swiss guy. He also speaks multiple languages, so we chatted first in French, then switched to German then to English before switching to Spanish and back to English. He must be very gifted at languages, because he said he learned Spanish living with families in Cuba for several months. His Spanish is not great, but it's certainly much better than I would expect from someone who learned it casually in such a short period of time. I have never had a chance to talk to this guy before, because he is one of those who drags in during the wee hours of the morning when I am in bed and gets up sometime in the late morning when I am out exploring the streets of Paris.

I watched the final mountain stage of the Tour de France on TV yesterday, and it was again very exciting with an unexpected stage winner and with Contador finally proving himself very powerful in the mountains, although not powerful enough to overcome his accumulated  time disadvantage. It will be interesting to see if Andy Scheck rides a good enough time trial in Grenoble today to hold onto the yellow jersey. I'm betting my money on Cadel Evans, who is probably a much better time trialist than Andy Schleck and is not that far behind Andy on general classification. I see no way that Contador can make up his time deficit. -- Jack Quinn