The bike trip ended this morning when we were dropped off in Oban. I plan on posting a lot more photos and videos in the weeks to come. For now, here's a group photo, taken in a Tesco parking lot in Oban this morning:

We learned at dinner last night that Ed blogged about having breakfast in 48 states, at Breakfast Across America. He and Pat, his wife -- called the "Healthy One" in the blog, made 5 car trips around the US to hit the 48 contiguous states and have breakfast in each one. The blog is a lot of fun. Charles Kuralt, the CBS newsman of "On the Road" fame, made a list of 12 locations to visit in the US, one for each month of the year. Ed's new project is do so. I think he said that he only has one left -- Ely, Minnesota in July. I look forward to reading that blog!

After saying goodbye to everyone, Ellen and I went to Flit Self Drive to pick up our rental car, a tiny, 4-door Kia Picanto. After not driving a manual for 6 years or so, and never driving on the left side of the road, I'm doing it now. I'm grateful that the weather is great and that Ellen is navigating!

We did a little shopping (chocolates and clothes), got lunch at a fish & chips shop (their front window said that National Geographic rated them the 3rd-best chippy in the UK; I didn't know that Nat Geo was in the ratings business!), and then hit the road for Oban. Driving the narrow, twisty roads was an adventure. Ellen was able to appreciate the beautiful scenery a lot more than I was.

We're now in Aberfeldy, doing some laundry at an outdoor(!) laundromat. When the clothes are done, we'll check into our AirBnb nearby in Weem.

In the morning we'll finish the drive to Braemar, and watch the Highland Games!

Here's the outdoor laundromat:

When we lived in St. Louis, we took advantage of Oberweis Dairy's home delivery service to get milk and dairy products delivered to our door. We loved it! The milk comes in glass containers, which we would put out for the delivery driver to pick up when they were empty. That really cut down on our use of plastic. Yes, plastic can be recyled, but it can only be recycled a limited number of times. This article says

It's a common misconception that most plastics can be recycled many times over. ... In practice, the majority of recycled plastics are only recycled once or twice before being finally disposed of in landfill or incineration. ... The limits to repeated mechanical recycling occur because of thermal breakdown/destruction in processing (which can degrade the quality of material) and the mixing or contamination of plastic polymer types means secondary plastics can be of low economic or practical value.

In contrast, glass containers can be washed and reused, and the glass itself can be re-melted endlessly with no loss of quality.

On top of this, it's just fun to wake up with fresh milk on your doorstep. To me, the milk tastes fresher, and it makes me feel closer to the farmer and the cows. This more than makes up for the slightly higher prices.

Here in the UK, we get home delivery from The Modern Milkman, and we still love it! My one complaint is that they only sell milk in pint bottles, not quarts, as Oberweis does. But it's not so bad -- our fridge is small, and it would be hard to fit quart bottles into it.

I don't find any home milk delivery services in northern Michigan, but hopefully one will be up and running by the time we move there. 🥛🐄

We had to get to the route early in order to beat the crowd, so we had some time to kill after we got there and staked out our position along the barricades. The Moulin Rouge was only a few hundred feet away, so I got a photo of it.

This video (link) shows our location on the barricade. It was taken about 2 hours before the racers arrived. We learned after we got there, and as is obvious from the video, Place Pigalle is a red light district. The videos I took are PG-13, but, just so you know, if you show them to your kids, you might get some questions.

The route made a turn half a block from the Moulin Rouge. I took a video (link) of the crowd at the turn.

The House of Orange-Nassau is the reigning house of the Netherlands, so the people dressed in orange in the videos are Dutch. There was a group of them across the barricade from us. The racers representing the Netherlands are also in orange tops. Normally the racers don't acknowledge the fans, but it was nice to see the Dutch riders acknowledge the Dutch fans with a smile or a wave.

By the time they reached us, the racers had already been racing over 5 hours. The winner, Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel, crossed the finish line in 6 hours, 19 minutes, so his average speed was 43 kph, or 27 mph. Try doing that on your next bike ride!