Lot's of great weather the last few weeks so we've been doing more bike riding. Here's a few random Italy shots. It's also the season that many of our friends and coworkers are leaving Aviano so there are a lot of parties to go to.

Last week as my last official project for the Air Force I was put in charge of putting together a proccessing station for an exercise which is basicly a war game. We put up some big tents and ran a little processing line for people coming into the exercise area. It was actually a lot of fun. The weather was great and it was nice working outside. The 3 AM to 3 PM shifts were not so pleasent though. Look closely at the group photo and try to guess which two guys on my crew are leaving Aviano soon.

The Sunday before Phil and Shannon left we drove to Ljubiana which is the capitol of Slovinia for the day. It's a great old city thats' really cosmopolitan compared to our part of Italy. What I mean by that is you can find Mexican food and people speak languages other than Italian. We stayed highly caffinated all day and Shannon kept up her streak of having Gelatto every day. That Monday they flew home to New Mexico. It was a great visit and we will miss them. You guys are going to visit us in Hawaii too, right?

Phil is an avid cyclist like us so we had to get out and do some riding which we did. I even gave him the full european cycling experience one day by riding in the pouring rain. We also had a treat one day when a bike race came by our house. There is a loop that get's used pretty often in the summer that is used for race's so we had a front row seat to drink wine and yell vai vai! Since a travel delay caused Phil and Shannon to miss the tour d' Italia, we made sure he got to see the giro d' Sacile!

After we watched the start I drove down to Venice to pick up our friend Phil from New Mexico and his daughter Shannon. I've been bugging him to visit for years and he was able to come over for a week. We did a few things in the local area over the memorial day weekend, then they took the train to Rome for a few days.

Just catching up on posting what we've been up to lately. The 1st of June Marianne and I rode into Brugnera to our usual Gelatto stand. On the way home I saw a Liquigas team car go by and remembered that a lot of the Pro bicycle racing teams stay at a hotel in Brugnera when the Giro d' Italia comes through our area. So we pedaled over there and got to check out the high dollar bikes and team mechanics cleaning them up for the next day. Friday morning we rode into Pordenone and watched the start of stage 19. Ivan Basso won that day as he did the whole tour eventually.

So I am totally behind in my posts. My friend Phil and his daughter Shannon from NewMexico were here visiting us last week and now I'm on 12 hour shifts for a week. 3 AM to 3 PM. My LAST week of work by the way. I have lot's of new pictures to share with everyone but it will have to wait a few more days 'till I catch up on some Z's.

B