Finally getting back to the bike trip theme, here is a synopsis of our goings-on in the nation’s capital. We arrived Saturday morning via train from Hartford, Connecticut at about 2:00 am. Lew Cramer, who is by all accounts an amazing man, proved again that he is a superhero by picking us up at the train station at that early hour AND giving us a guided tour on the way to his house. We slept in the next day before being dropped off at Ballston Mall, where there is also a Metro (Suway) stop. At the mall, Scott got shoes (his cycling shoes were less comfortable than mine) and I got backpack, shorts, and shoes. We then headed out on the Metro for the Smithsonian stop, and began the grand tour. We visited a lot that afternoon, including the National History and Natural History museums, a good look at the Capitol, the FDR, Jefferson, and Lincoln Memorials, and the Vietnam, Korea, and WWII memorials. By then it was getting late, so we headed back to Ballston where our gracious hosts picked us up once again.
Sunday, we repeated the procedure, but this time at the West Fall’s Church stop. The line to the National Archives was longer than it had been before, so we skipped it agian and instead hit up the National Galleries and the Air and Space Museum before enjoying a wonderful meal with the Cramers that evening and vegging out to Star Wars: A New Hope that night.
On Monday, the Cramers left for the week, so we let ourselves ou of the house, caught the bus, hooked up with Tim, took the Metro to his place where we dumped our stuff for the day, returned to the mall to chat, drink, and have fun while waiting for the fireworks to begin. The fireworks where on the wrong side of the National Monument, and we couldn’t hear the music at all from where we were sitting, but it was still a pretty good show. Not quite to the standard of a multi-trillion dollar government budget though, in my opinion.
After the show, we braved huge crowds to make it back to Tim’s place, where we picked up our stuff before heading back to the Metro for the ride into Union Station, where we were catching a 3:00am train for New York. Unlike in NYC, where the traisn run all night, WDC’s system shuts down around midnight, so we had to hustle to make sure we would make it, which we did, but just barely. At the train station, we snoozed some before making our way on to the train where we snoozed some more and the train slowly got more full. We arrived in New York before Maneesh left his apartment, and made our way to his location that morning. But that, as they say, is another story.
