in Los Angeles in early May, where it made its way to Houston to join three others for the overseas trip to Rotterdam.)

Tori and I were flying in early, so we would have four days before to the road trip to get our body clocks adjusted. Our first two leisurely days in Amsterdam, she and I played tourist. We visited the Anne Frank Museum, took a canal tour, and explored the entire city on foot. (With a few shopping breaks, of course.) And we ate.

The Dutch eat a lot of meat, sausages, and potatoes, which is endearing to my German palette. (All of my family on both sides reside near the Dutch border, in the northwestern German state of Niedersachsen.) Our best meal was a breakfast of Dutch pannekoks (pancakes). Strawberries and vanilla ice cream on top for Tori, bananas and apples for me.

The third day, we took a 30-minute taxi ride east of Amsterdam to Almere, both the starting point of Shelby Run Europe and the hometown of Patrick and Astrid. Our lodgings in Almere were at the Van der Valk, a Dutch chain I've stayed at before. The property was clean, the staff friendly, and both the bedrooms and baths were very large. They easily accommodated our group with a large meeting room for a pre-run mixer and a first night banquet with excellent food choices. First though, our cars...

That afternoon, co-organizer Sean Cook drove four of us to collect our cars from the dock in Rotterdam. The "Gateway to Europe" is about an hour and a quarter to the southwest of Almere on the North Sea and one of the world's largest ports. Of the eight cars shipped from the United States, four originated in Houston; the others were shipped from Baltimore.

Walking into that warehouse and seeing my car in exactly the same condition it had been in when I dropped it off in Los Angeles was a major relief. Other than a little dust, all four cars looked great. Having provided our passports, insurance documents, and signatures, off we went for the 90-kilometer drive back north to Almere. After we got cleaned up at the hotel, everyone headed to Patrick and Astrid's for a wonderful welcoming BBQ.