Monday, June 18, 2012

How I Spent Part 1 of My Summer Vacation, Part One

I have this thing about traveling and talking about it while I’m traveling. I realize that life doesn’t exist unless it’s tweeted or facebooked or foursquared, or all three at once, but I’m afraid that if I start telling everybody the Chez is empty and available, it will be taken over by debate ruffians just wanting to get their hands on my classic copy of Black’s Law Dictionary to see if it really exists, not to mention the Speecho-American ruffians who will drink all my liquor and get my cat pregnant. (Poor Tiki—I don’t think pregnancy would suit him.) Maybe it’s a generational thing. I can actually go somewhere and not immediately report on it. Maybe it’s that I can’t keep my comments down to a small number of characters, or at least I don’t want to. A lot of what I do doesn’t warrant comment, but what does, warrants a sufficient amount thereof. Hence a blog with no limits. Read it at your own risk.

The vacation was a week long. It originally was planned to cover the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, but ultimately didn’t. I really wanted to see Annapolis, but not enough to actually go there, if you know what I mean. By the same token, I really want to see West Point, which I can practically walk to from the Chez, and I don’t do that either. It is not any sort of antimilitary bent: far from it, not to mention my fascination with the history of the places. It’s just that when push comes to shove, I don’t shove. So, the first thing we didn’t see on our trip was Annapolis, which was going to be our first overnight stop. And I don’t have the photographs to prove it.

Instead we went directly to DC, planning to day-trip from there, although obviously the Annapolis day trip was lost somewhere in the shuffle. We arrived in the middle of a heat wave, and spent a couple of days walking slowly and drinking lots of water, but not so much as you’d notice. We hit various spots of interest, like the Building Museum, Smithsonian American Art museum, the Corcoran, Renwick, National Gallery, FDR memorial, TJ memorial (which I’d never been in before), etc., etc., etc. It was the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts, who took over the mall in force. Honestly, they reminded me a lot of Speecho-Americans, only younger. They were clogging the Metro, I’ll tell you that. I’ll also tell you that we never were in a Metro experience that wasn’t, in some way, broken or failing. Trains break down more often than not, finding a working escalator wins you free drinks at the nearest pub, and anyone who can actually understand the announcements is instantly worshipped as a god by the rest of the passengers who are mostly wondering if, in fact, the announcements are in English. I would say not, from my experience. If you begin thinking that the New York subway system is splendid by comparison, then you know you’re in trouble. Hell, the Kandahar subway system is probably splendid by comparison, and that’s when they’re bombing it by mistake.

We also boated over to Mount Vernon to see the General. A nice way to get there, floating down the Potomac. When we arrived there were more Girl Scouts in clog mode, needless to say, but it is a place one must visit. At the gravesite, they give you roses to lay down in homage. I sort of got choked up, I’ll admit. The General is one of my heroes (as he should be one of any American’s heroes), and actually paying one’s respects, even two hundred years later, seems fitting.

We were in DC from Friday night (who doesn’t love driving down 95 during rush hour?) through Thursday morning. Then it was onward to Pennsylvania and Maryland, about which, later.
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