DC

Some things don't change about being a country bumpkin in the Big City, and some things do. One thing that hasn't changed, judging from our weekend jaunt to D.C., is that since moving to North Carolina I've lost any vestige of patience or tolerance for urban traffic, both its volume and its seemingly arbitrary directional patterns that always seemed to place me two lanes over from the turn lane I wanted to be in or directly underneath the bridge I was aiming for. In Greensboro, both of our horse-and-buggy trails are clear and well-marked.

I was able to make use of a recent technological advance in bumpkinhood to somewhat compensate, though. On my way into the District on Friday afternoon to meet Leslie at our hotel at 23rd and M NW, the Google Maps directions I had printed out burst into a methaphorical flame the moment I passed over the Arlington Memorial bridge and encountered an immediate Y intersection for which I was offered no clues. Since I had at least a 50-50 chance of choosing correctly, of course I chose wrong and was headed the wrong way toward several famous buildings I didn't want to see right then.

However, in anticipation of just such a scenario, before I left I'd programmed our hotel's location into the handheld GPS unit that we use for hiking and kayaking. Unfortunately, since because we're pretty well familiar with both of our horse-and-buggy lanes in NC, we haven't bothered to spring for the street map software for the unit, instead I was using the topographic and navigational maps that we do use while we're being outdoorsy. It's great at that, but it turns out that it's not quite as efficient to find your way from Arlington to Georgetown using altitude readings and tidal charts as it might have been with, say, an address. But at least I knew what general direction our hotel lay in, and I probably would still be looking for it now if it hadn't been for that. So hooray for progress.

Our trip was great except for the following minor inconveniences:
1) The aforementioned navigational challenges
2) Leslie threw out her shoulder hauling her suitcase from the metro stop to the hotel
3) I slipped and fell on my ass (or more specifically, on my wrist, elbow and knee) in front of the fire station, where apparently, in a fit of irony, DC public safety officials had thought to water down the driveway in front of the ambulance bay on a sub-freezing morning and
4) A beautiful, rare bird in the Outdoor Flying exhibit at the National Zoo crapped on my shoulder, like it was some kind of classless pigeon.

Other than those things, though, we had a uniformly fabulous time, the highlight being the dinner we shared Friday night with Vikram and Dilshika and Kat and Bill. Vikram found us a great restaurant where we could park ourselves for three and a half hours and catch up/become new friends in the various combinations present. Extra kudos to Kat, my friend from Fresno/KMPH days, for hauling herself and her hubby all the way down from Baltimore for the occasion. I'm hoping they made it home safely after the four bottles of wine.

We also enjoyed the chance to see V and D's home on Capitol Hill. They've got a great neighborhood, just funky and urban enough, though it would probably be a little too urban for us and our three dogs. (This is a thought exercise we go through everyplace we visit.)

Among the touristy locales, we probably spent about equal time at the zoo and at the Holocaust Museum. We actually went to the Holocaust Museum twice because we couldn't get all the way through it before it closed on Friday afternoon, so we returned on Sunday morning - partly because it was very well done, both emotionally and educationally, and also because when we ran out of time we were just right at the horrifying scale model of the gas chamber at Auschwitz and the haunting room full of the shoes stolen from the victims as they were being ushered to their deaths, which is about as sad a thing as you can possibly imagine. It's not that it turns out well after that, of course, but at least we wanted to see the bad guys lose.

Incidentally, I checked and there is no National Museum of Kittens and Clowns nearby, as much as you might feel like you need one.

The zoo was good in an entirely different kind of way. A number of the animals seemed to be missing, but I suppose it's not in the zoological code of ethics to create leopardsicles in the middle of winter just so we could see them. But the giant pandas were there and doing there thing (eathing bamboo and scratching their testicles, where available) and being appropriately cute, though to be honest the nearby red pandas were more entertaining because they were chasing each other around.


I was a little disappointed that we were in DC for two and a half days and nobody offered us any bribes, but at least we managed to avoid any terrorist attacks too.