Highlights from the D.C. Trip

Road Trip: Introducing Church to Gloria. See, you laughed about her heated seats…

Yoko’s clarinet performance: of “light classical music”, both solo and in conjunction with violin, piano and organ, at a local Presbyterian church with a happy, welcoming congregation. Damn she’s good! (And no ninjas attacked her this time.)

Drinks and food afterwards: What a relief to let Lipby and Gyllipus solve the problems of the universe for a change, while I got to giggle and chat. When YOU order your French Fries with mayonnaise, I’ll order the hot toddy. Just turn off the reggaeton so I can hear.

What Mercury?: Cold. Freakin’ cold. Freaking unreasonably cold. And windy. God damn.

The DC Metro: Storms through tunnels at the bottom of vertiginous escalators that would make a thousand people a day plummet to their deaths in the City of Mists. And then stops running at some point after midnight. What the fuck? I am not walking across the goddamn Potomac, people.

Bagels That Aren’t: A hot dog shaped oblong filled with cream cheese that doesn’t need to be refrigerated sealed in a plastic bag is NOT A BAGEL. NOT.

The National Museum of American History: Saw the John Bull, a 19^th century locomotive that looked like something out of Laputa; THE Star Spangled Banner, from Fort McHenry (the one that inspired Francis Scott Key to write our national anthem); an assortment of popular culture items, including a pair of Ruby Slippers from the film version of The Wizard of Oz, Carol Burnett’s dress from her Gone With the Wind parody sketch, Minnie Pearl’s Hat, Archie Bunker’s chair and one of Jim Henson’s Kermit the Frog puppets; plus the gunboat Philadelphia from the Revolutionary War.

“Squirrel!”: The quickly coined term (a la Up) for anything really cool that immediately distracted our attention from whatever it was we had intended to head for.

Too Much to See: You can’t even give ONE museum in Washington a decent treatment in a single day, much less all the ones around the Mall…

The National Museum of Natural History: Targeted specifically in order to see the Giant Squids (despite Church’s insistence that there were two, only one was on display; the other is apparently now sitting in their warehouses as a back-up or loaner squid.) Not quite 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea size, but huge and cool and REAL and all the damn more impressive for it. Also got blinded by the Hope Diamond, and dazzled by the huge mineral and gemological exhibit there, just in general. Not payin’ extra for butterflies, though.

Best Downplay of the Trip: Small notecard in the National Museum of Natural History indicating “that milky-looking fluid in the small vial on your right is older than the Solar System”.

Why?: Build a scale model of that self-same Solar System along the Mall? Who except me will notice? Or care?

Pumpkin Soup: Served in the cafeteria of the National Museum of the American Indian, along with a variety of other indigenous dishes, all separated according to the geographic region of the peoples who commonly ate them. Garnished with spicy roasted seeds, and tasty, but way too expensive, and I only got it because they were out of venison. Should have gone with the salmon…

The Capitol: Closed, and the steps patrolled by armed guards. Your tax dollars at work.

Land of the Free: Basic admission to all of the national museums in Washington is FREE, and aside from the security protocols, you can wander in and out as you like. Your tax dollars really at work.

The National Museum of Art: Never found the prints and drawings, but spent an hour among the Rembrandts and VanWycks and Vermeers, locking eyes with people 400 years dead who were obviously every bit as real as you and me…

Showin’ Off: By quietly getting to do my Sage routine commenting on all the stuff in the museums. (Church got to do the same outside, commenting on the DC airspace.)

The National Archives: Missed the civilian entrance, and walked instead up the front steps, to the 40- foot-tall metal double doors on the front of the place. And then, like the Myst players we were, stood there with big shit-eating grins on our faces trying to figure out how to open them. (Memo to self: Annon edhellen, edro hi ammen…)

The Washington Monument: HINT: 500 foot tall free-standing stone needle is NOT where you want to be if you have any level of acrophobia. If it only ever moves an eighth of an inch in the wind, then how come there’s a sign at the base next to the entrance that says “Closed Due to High Winds”? (And how did someone manage to get a green crayon behind all that sealed plexiglass?) Got the tickets for free, though– Kindness of Strangers.

The World War II Memorial: Big and impressive, but desolate-seeming, and we couldn’t figure out how or why it was arranged the way it was. Maybe better in the summer with the fountains running.

The Lincoln Memorial: Choked up standing beneath it, staring up at him. I guess if somebody’s got to cry for us all, it might as well be me.

Taberna del Alabardero: Paella and Rioja in a festive Spanish restaurant with impeccable service that called to me through the streets of the city, much louder than the Terra-Cotta warriors.

Get Away From Her You BITCH!: Poor Dragonia couldn’t figure out why Church and I both stopped talking and screamed simultaneously; it was because AMC was running Aliens on the hotel room TV, and they cut to commercial just as Ripley finished walking out of the loading bay– BEFORE she delivered the line. They almost redeemed themselves by following it up with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, though, which Church had never seen, and which we gleefully watched into the small hours of the morning.

Yoko: Who gets more graceful, elegant and centered-seeming every time I see her.

Lipby: Who is graceful in his own right, and remains welcoming and observant.

Gyllipus: Who remains an engaging and erudite companion, and to whom more than anyone I owe an apology for only hooking up with for one bare night.

Church: Who isn’t terribly concerned about how we’re getting there, but terribly desires to have a plan once we do; who needs to climb trees and hills to orient herself, because she’s used to seeing everything from the sky; who walked and walked through the cold and the wind and never once complained, even when she should have; and who tries very, very hard not to tell everyone else in the world what the hell their problem is, and is hilarious when she fails, because she’s usually right.

The aforementioned Terra-Cotta Warriors: Next time, maybe. ;)