2011 Myrtle Beach Marathon

J.T. (above) is on the front row on the left in a blue tank top

J.T. finished this marathon with a new personal record 3 hours, 9 minutes, 12 seconds. The happy details: he finished well among the crowd of 1500 runners and he was 4th out of 200 in his age group. This time qualifies him to run in the New York City Marathon and to repeat his 2006 running of the Boston Marathon (in April 2012).

This trip with friends has become an annual tradition. We have warm memories of these trips, as well as our Fall 2010 trip to Greece with both of the ladies in yellow below (and their spouses). Notice that Steve (below) who has white hair and a beard looks quite a bit like the fisherman in the painting behind him. Mr. Gorton?

Traveling to Greece

J.T. with our stack of electronics in Philly's airport. We traveled there with Roger and Julie. In Philly, we met up with Steve and Robin (also from Greensboro). In Athens, Bobby and Debbie kindly met us at the airport with our 9-passenger rental van. Bobby returned to the airport in the middle of the night to pick up Mike from Atlanta. They had a story to tell the next morning about having been stopped by the local police. Luckily, the police waved them on after they said they were in town to run the marathon. Surprisingly, the police cars did not look very official and they were not wearing uniforms. Even the official ID of the police looked like a simple college ID. The guys were relieved to not be robbed! The next day at the race expo, we met two Americans who work at the embassy there. They confirmed that although surprising, Bobby and Mike's traffic stop did sound like the work of the official police.

The Fabulous Alps. I'd love to visit/ski there someday.

We flew from Charlotte to Philadelphia (6-hour layover allowed us to ride the train to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell) to Zurich to Athens.

On our return trip, we flew from Athens to Charlotte via Munich (photo below):