Travel Letters

The Sinaw Souk

Posted January 29, 2015 by Jan

The Souk

Sinaw

Oman

January 29, 2015

On my drive to the north coast of Oman, I stop in the city of Sinaw. The guidebook lists the population at about 10,000, but on this Thursday Market Day, the city explodes into a multi-colored array of buyers and sellers from around the region.

Unlike the Nizwa Goat Market where the participants are all men and boys dressed in the traditional white dishdasha, the souk here in Sinaw is crowded with both men and boys and women and girls.

Bahla: Two Castles and a Souk

Posted January 30, 2015 by Jan

Oman

Sohar

Sultanate of Oman

January 30, 2015

As I drive through the mountains on my way to the north coast beach resort of Sohar, I visit two castles and a market.

The castles are described in my guidebook and clearly marked on my map. I find the market (souk) by “accident.” It is the best site of the day.

Olympia: The Marathon

Posted May 3, 2015 by twj

Greece

Olympia
Peloponnese
Greece
May 1, 2015

My Fellow Athletes,

Can we agree on one thing? Frank Shorter started it all.

In 1972 at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, Frank Shorter became the first American man to win the Gold Medal in the Olympic Marathon. (The Marathon by definition is 40.2 kilometers or 26.2 miles.)

In 1984, Joan Benoit added her name to Olympic Legend when she became the first American woman to win the Gold Medal in the Olympic Marathon. Actually she was the first woman ever to win Gold since the female Marathon event was first added to the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles that very year. (Joan had already won the Boston Marathon in both 1979 and 1983.)

After Frank’s championship and surely after Joan’s extraordinary Olympic accomplishment, we Americans decided to emulate our two new heroes. We donned our sweat suits and our Nike Waffle Trainers and Adidas County Striders, dutifully performed our stretching exercises, and headed out the door for our training run.