Yay! Ray finished!! Not quite the time he wanted, but he hit a ton of problems: The swim took at least 15 minutes longer than he expected. When he got in the water, he said it felt like his chest constricted and he couldn't breathe. I think it's because he didn't get time to warm up, but he thinks it's because swimming has increased the size of his chest, and now the wetsuit is too small. Then, his bike shoes got closed so that as he was coming out of the transition area, and trying to mount and get his feet in… well, he couldn't. Then, the "hill" was a lot tougher than he thought it would be. (It's Switzerland. I mean. Come on. Of course you are going to go up little mountains.) Then, the worst part was the run. He bonked with about 5k left. He couldn't take in any calories because nothing would sit well on his stomach. (Gels are just evil to him.) So, he made it through the first 10 miles, but by that last bit, he had to walk. But, the important thing is this: He finished. That's more than I can say.

I will post pictures of stuff at some point soon. No, really. I will.

Switzerland itself was gorgeous. We were in Rapperswil, right on Lake Zurich. All I can say is: Wow. I have pictures, but I don't think they even start to do it justice. And the weather! Beautiful, sunny and warm. On the race day it was up to 76F / 24C, though it was comfortable in the days leading up to Sunday, as well. For those couple of days, we just relaxed, wandered around, took pictures of ducks. It was cool.

Another really interesting thing were the dogs. It's been this way in all the German speaking countries I've visited. Dogs are part of the family. They go in the restaurants with their humans, and, typically, they just sit there and behave. Though, twice (once a Dachsie and once a German Shepherd) there were folks with puppies trying to learn manners. They were really cute in both cases, and despite their less than perfect behaviour, they were better behaved than any of our dogs could ever be.

Other stuff:

Ed is getting really, really, really skinny. We've changed his food, and he seems to like it a lot better, so we will see how it goes. We realized that he couldn't be eating his food when, during lunch, he would come in and beg for whatever we were eating. It turns out that he absolutely loves ham. Also, we got Dominos a few weeks back, and left the box of free chicken strips on a low lying table. Ray went to get a napkin, I turned my back and only because I heard the cardboard scrape did I turn around. Ed was pilfering our chicken strips right out of the box!! So, we decided that we should change his food, see if we could make him happier with something that wasn't Iams. It's been less than a week, but he hasn't begged for ham yet…. One really bad thing is that he's taken to yowling at all hours, though. It's almost that tomcat yowl, but he's been fixed since he was a kitten, so, I don't really know why he does it.

Emma, on the other hand, is just plain fat. We aren't willing to change the food because Dingo likes it. We don't really want to stop them from free feeding, either because we don't want Abbie or Dingo to start losing weight. So… We are trying to walk Emma, and trying to keep her from eating as much. She doesn't get as much in the way of table scraps as the other two. But she is a Corgi, and they have a tendency towards portliness. All four of them get to go to the vet this Thursday for their yearly checkup. That should be fun.

A while back, I'd made the observation that someone in Schiphol was drinking a beer at 9AM… Our flight from Gatwick this time left at 8AM (or was supposed to). So, obviously it was really early. As expected, we couldn't get breakfast anywhere because everything was so packed. But, in every single establishment, there were large numbers of people drinking beer. At 6:30 in the morning. Is this normal?

Anyway, that's all for now…