Temperature and humidity continued to rise and life slowed down even more. I still manage to walk around 12 km each day but I have been inserting more pool time. The pool is now nearly deserted most of the time, sometimes I am the only one in. We have finally accumulated enough plants (most of them in pots) to give our patio the appropriate tropical look.

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A friend of our rented a beach house in Galveston for a week and so this year for the first time we drove to the beach. I forgot how warm the Gulf of Mexico gets. The wind skims the top layer of warm water and piles is up against the beach. The result is bath water. I do not think I will ever be able to swim in anything colder.

July also brought another short trip to London. Since I was going to stay only six days it was important to get over jet lag as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is vigorous activity on the day of arrival, which then leads to a long healthy sleep the very first night and the next day there is no jet lag. My flight arrived on Sunday morning and so I decided to walk part of the capital ring, 78 mile long path around London. I walked segment 9 from Greenford to South Kenton. The brilliant thing about the ring is that it can be accessed easily by city transport and yet it is distinctly outside of the city. The highlight of this particular segment was the Harrow School, the alma mater of Winston Churchill, Lord Byron and other luminaries. On the way I passed through the suburb of Ealing which is Indian country. Colorful saris, smell of curry and while you might have a hard time finding KFC you can always drop into the Tennessee Halal Chicken store. These days though, there is also a palpable Polish presence in the area. I was staying in a small hotel near the Victoria station. One evening I dropped in for a beer in the hotel bar and had to strain to read the bartenders name tag. His name was Milos Rydl and he was from Prague. But apparently with the Czech crown rising and the pound dropping, working in the UK is now a loosing proposition from the financial point of view. And apparently, the large Polish influx is also reversing direction.