Sabbatical #11 - Monastery and London

Sorry for the delay with the updates. We have been doing a lot of traveling since we last talked...

After returning from Hawaii, my next race was in Muncie for the USAT Midwest Regionals. I ran the Sprint race and placed first in my age group!

A few days later I had the opportunity to travel to the Abbey of Gethsemani, which is a Trappist

Monastery in the hills of Kentucky. Thomas Merton was a well known monk that had lived there. I stayed 2 nights, in silence, and went to their many worship and prayer times. I spent the days reading, riding my bike in the hills, and going to prayer times. I also enjoyed some of the Bourbon-Fudge that the monks make. I was scheduled to stay 3 nights, but after 2 days of silence, I felt I needed to get home to be with my family. We were also only a few days away from...

LONDON!! When I first talked to Beth about what we might do on the Sabbatical, we discussed "Destination Races" and where we might want to go. It just so happened that Triathlete Magazine had done an article a few years ago about the best Destination Races. The Leeds Castle Triathlon was listed as the #1 race. The Leeds Castle is located south of London in Kent, near Maidstone. The region of Leeds is north of London, in central England. We decided that our family would spend about 5 days in London and 3 days in the country. We booked an apartment in Hounslow and a BnB in Maidstone. I also rented a car for the last half of our stay.

We spent the first 5 days exploring London and learning our way around on the Underground Subway system. It was really fun and a great way to get around without driving. (More on that in a bit). Some of our favorite things were: going up in the London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral, Evensong worship at Westminster Abbey, Kew Gardens, visiting Greenwich, visiting Wimbledon, and riding the Double-Decker Buses. Marshall and I went to see the play "Titanic" at a small theater, and it was amazing! Our entire family went back to the theater a few nights later to have dinner. The menu had selections that were served on the Titanic. I chose something NOT served on the failed ship, and had one of the top 5 burgers of my life.

In order for us to get out to the countryside, I needed to rent a car. This was a stress-inducing endeavor for me. The streets can get very narrow, and not only is the steering wheel on the right side,
everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. I was given the advice to rent an automatic, and it had to fit 6 with luggage. A Diesel VW Mini-Van did the trick. It got us out to Wimbledon one day, but I thank the Lord for Google Maps. It seems there is no direct route anywhere! We packed up the apartment and headed toward Kent on Saturday morning. Along the way we stopped at a Boarding School to talk to the young man that I was renting a bicycle from, using the website Spinlister.com. There was no room for the bike, so I would have to come back later to pick it up. He left it for me in a closet because he had a cricket match.

We drove out to our AirBnB rental which was located at an Equestrian Riding School. The girls fell in love with the horses and even got a riding lesson. It was a very beautiful setting for 3 nights. And it was located only 15 minutes from Leeds Castle. We had an amazing view just across from the front yard. One night we took a short drive to Chatham for dessert and walking along the shore. We had one of our many servings of fish and chips as well. We had dinner one evening in Maidstone at a great place called Wildwood. I had the best Philly Cheese Steak sandwich I've ever had.


The day of the race came and we all got up early so I could make it there for the 8am start. The race happened on the castle-grounds. The swim (1500m) took place in the moat. The water was only about 5 feet deep, and you could stand anywhere. At one point, my hands were dragging through sludge at the bottom. The bike ride was 26 miles across some beautiful English countryside. The roads were a bit rough, and of course, you rode on the left and passed on the right. The run (6 miles) was then on the grounds, through grass and mud. It was a slow run for everyone. It was very picturesque all morning. I was happy to finish, my right leg was really starting to hurt. I've been nursing a bad hamstring and calf all season.

It was finally time to say good bye to England. While we were there at least 2 historic events happened: England voted to leave the European Union, and the English Soccer Team lost to Iceland in the European Soccer Tournament. It's hard to say what was more of a story at the time we were there. Maybe the third largest story was that we returned the rental van without a scratch on it. I guess the "Full Coverage" option was not needed after all. Then again, that insurance allowed me to sleep at night.

We did not have a "smooth" re-entry into the US. Our flight from Heathrow to Washington DC was delayed 30 minutes...no problem. We still had an hour and a half to make a connection to Indy. It seemed that TSA had a different idea. We made it through customs fairly easily, but the TSA line to re-check in was very long. We ended up missing our flight by 5 minutes, after running across the airport for 20 minutes. We later came to find out that while we were flying there was a large terrorist attack at the airport in Turkey. Perhaps this added to the delay with heightened security. We ended up taking a shuttle to a nearby hotel and spending the night in DC. We awoke at 5am for a taxi ride back to the airport and made our flight back to Indy. We were glad to be home, but had a great time in London. We had 2 days home until... next installment coming soon.