They say, "You could take a lifetime in DC and never really see it all." They say, "One day is not enough, you'd just be cheating yourself to even try." They say, "Buy low, sell high. Aim for the sun, hit a star. A fool and his money soon find themselves wearing rose-colored glasses between a rock and a hard place, putting an apple a day in a gift horse's mouth. Play Freebird, dude!"
They are deeply disturbed. That's why we don't listen to them. We keep our own counsel, seeing however many sights our weary feet might allow us. We do, however, encourage street musicians to "Play Freebird" as often as possible. "And this bird you'll never caaaaaaaage... whoaaaa...whoaaaa....whoaaaaaa...whoa." We've found that it sounds best on accordion, though one particular one-man band did an admirable job recreating Skynrd's live version, all four limbs going herky-jerky, threatening to loose themselves from his torso and take flight. That dude kicked ass.
Let's set the scene. Day 2, DC. Temperatures skyrocketing to triple digits, mercury bubbling in the glass. Code-red air quality, the infants and elderly indoors. An open city spread out before us, brimming with museums, galleries, and monuments. Three tourists, one mission -- see it all or fall down trying. Were we equal to the task? We started out slowly, stretching and flexing our tourist muscles to get ready for the long haul ahead. The White House is easy, a can of corn. You look, you see, you go. Since that one fellow took a few potshots from Pennsylvania Avenue at Slick Willie's head, you can't get all that close to the house itself unless you are on some sort of official tour. Since we had no time for lines, red tape, or any kind of bureaucratic folderol, we were out of there faster than you can say, "Gore in 2000!" |
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| Time for the Smithsonian. You might have heard of it -- tiny little outfit in Washington DC that runs a few podunk museums foisted on unsuspecting tourists? No problem. We'll see that. We started with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Two hours later, we had finished maybe a fraction of what was available. Old Glory? Saw it. Thomas Edison's patents? Saw 'em. Foucault's pendulum? Swung back and forth on it, baby. President Harding's fly rod and hand-tied flies? You bet we saw 'em. Jackie-O's gowns? Practically tried them on, they were so close. Eisenhower's golf clubs? Had to stop Rosalie from stealing the putter. Ike was always a soft touch around the greens. | |
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We were starting to fray a little bit at the edges, so we decided it was time for food. Sustenance. Fuel for our tanks. Heading for the cafeteria, we spied the poor played-out husks at the left. We'd heard them talking big at the entrance, how they were gonna "dominate the Smithsonian. Just dominate it." Now here they were, dismal and deflated, just two more sad victims of museum burn-out. It wasn't pretty, but we had to soldier on -- we had our own fates to think about. "Poor prima-donna punks," said Rosalie. "Yup," said Kristanne. "But they knew the danger." We chewed our french-fries in stone-faced silence, alone with our thoughts, mutely contemplating the struggle that lay ahead. Finally, Rosalie broke the silence. "Anybody want the rest of my crab salad sandwich?" |
| Perspective regained, we marched on over to the National Gallery of Art. Kristanne, being an Art Historian, was pretty much giddy with excitement about this. It didn't disappoint. The first room we visited contained a piece by one of her favorite medieval artists, Giotto. Her jaw dropped lower and lower as we looked at artwork that previously had only existed in textbooks for me. Titian. Raphael. Botticelli. Degas. Monet. Manet. Van Gogh. It was flat-out incredible, but there was just too much. The museums would be closing at 5:00 and it was already 3:45. We practically sprinted through, seeing as much as we possibly could. We didn't even make it to the National Gallery's modern collection, time was so short. | |
| Our dogs were barking pretty loud at this point, but there was still the National Museum of Flight and Space. For a kid, this museum has got to be as near to heaven as you've ever been. Space capsules you can actually go into! Airplanes you can actually walk through! The Skylab Space Station, completely open to investigate! An IMAX theater with a lunar landing show! Simply from an historical perspective, this place was great -- the Spirit of St. Louis (shown at right). The plane in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. The plane flown by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. The first Sputnik satellite launched by the Soviet Union (the satellite launching widely credited with providing the impetus for our own space program). The forward section of the Enola Gay (the bomber that dropped the A-bomb on Nagasaki)...on and on and on. We had to carry our jaws to keep them from scraping on the floor. |  |
| Eventually, though the museum closes and you have to go home. Bowed but unbroken, we headed for the Metro and back to the hotel. We had an entire hour to rest before it was time to head over to the Kennedy Center and see the 'Phantom of the Opera.' Kristanne's parents had kindly acquired tickets for all four of us. After a pleasant dinner at the top of the Kennedy Center, we headed down to see the show. And what a show it was! Falling chandeliers, operatic singing, stage dives that would make even the toughest of punk rockers cringe...quite a spectacle, indeed. The 'Phantom...' features a wide array of "now, how'd they do that..." kinda stunts. Real headscratchers. Luckily, Calvin had been given a tour of the entire set that day and was able to tell us exactly how a boat was made to sail itself through a mist of dry fog, how a chandelier was steered from the theater's roof down to the stage without killing anybody, how an actor was able to dive into the stage from a catwalk strung 20 feet in the air without ending up in a wheelchair. Very interesting stuff. We even got the presidential shot of the day in the Kennedy Center, right in front of a bust of ole JFK himself. That's Bob Dole walking into the frame there at the right. He doesn't stop for anyone. | |
After a full day, we slept deeply, the better to prepare ourselves for the upcoming drive to Rhode Island. See you next time!
Total Miles for 7/17 = 0