Tanagra Air Base is about one hour north of Athens. After arriving, we met the USAF personnel working there and finalized paperwork prior to the test flight. A few weeks prior to this trip, I had completed what we call the functional check flight (FCF) upgrade. Essentially, there are times when certain types maintenance is done on a jet that requires a flight to test all systems are functioning property. It's a jam packed flight ranging from flying supersonic a 1.4 mach to putting the jet basically out of control to see if the digital flight controls function as they should. I was ready to fly when in the early afternoon they noticed a slow air leak in one of the main landing gear tires...this was not going to be fixed until the next week, which started on Tuesday due to the holiday. So, we left the base and headed to our 5 star hotel a little further north on the beach in the town of Eretria. The price was under our cap for hotel costs and was a nice start to our time in Greece. The next day we took a ferry across the bay, and the caught a bus to Athens to see the Parthenon on Mars Hill and some of the nearby Greek ruins.
Mars Hill is one of the exact places Paul traveled to on his missionary journeys almost 200o years ago! As we made our way up the hill, one of the signs had a portion that read, "In the niche formed by southeast corner of the precinct wall were found the remains of a small roadside shrine of porous stone. It was dedicated to an unknown deity..." Now, if you read Acts 17:23 written by Paul it says, "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD'!" Lana and I both felt reading this on the sign and from the Bible made everything more real...the truth of God is real!
On top of Mars Hill is the well known Parthenon dating back to well before Christ, sometime during the 5th century BC. It's amazing the structure is still standing today after so many years. Thankfully, archaeologists are taking the time to preserve what is left today. We spent a good hour or so there and spent some more time reading from Acts before finding a nice cafe for a drink. We caught an afternoon bus back to our hotel just in time to get another great tasting Greek salad before the hotel restaurant closed for the evening! We spent Sunday and Monday at the hotel pool and beach relaxing and getting some sun before heading back to the base on Tuesday. Thankfully the jet was ready to flight test, and all systems checked good. After I landed the maintainers put the external wing tanks back on, fueled the jet and I flew home before sunset that evening. The other pilot on the trip sat in the tower during my test flight with the emergency checklist to help in case I had any problems. He took a commercial flight back home later in the evening, and Lana flew to Munich to work a Lufthansa trip to Los Angeles.
My second trip to Greece was only two days and there wasn't much time for additional site seeing. I had some time to check out the 2004 Summer Olympic Park, but that's about it. Yet another country and culture to add to an ever growing list! It's good blessed with a job in the US Air Force!
Videos:
