Headed East ('cuz I'm Not a Young Man Anymore)
 

Well, after a lifetime of putting it off, Leslie, myself, and a couple of friends are headed to Washington DC this week. Due to work complications, they're all leaving KC tomorrow by car, and I'm flying from here Sunday AM to meet them in Dayton. They'll pick me up at the airport there, we'll do a lick and a promise visit to The Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson, then end up in DC very late Sunday night.

I've already worked up a tentative plan to have dinner and drinks with Pie one evening, and although I'd like to have the time to go a couple of hours North and hook up with some of you who are more Philly located, I don't think the time is going to be there. However, anyone who might want to try and grab an evening meetup while we're in DC proper, let me know! The more the merrier, and since this is the first time I've managed to get that direction in this lifetime, it might also be the last...they don't let me out much.

We'll be doing the usual tourist thing in DC for four whirlwind days, departing on Friday AM to hit Wallops Island and Chincoteague, then a semi leisurely drive back to KC via the Southernish route.
I'm excited to finally get the chance to hit places like the Smithsonian museums, and, most importantly, Udvar-Hazy. Fortunately, our female traveling companions are being very understanding about my nerdgasm over aircraft.

I've just started mackin' on a girl in Baltimore... When you say "this week", it looks like you mean from sun/mon to friday? There's an outside outside chance i could try to get down thataway on thursday next but... not too likely.

Have a wonderful time, Spode.
Pics if you meet anyone.

Who did you lick and what was the promise?

I thought this was going to be another coming out thread.

Your going to hate it, constantly saying why don't I have a month to stay here. :haha:
Seriously, it's so big and crammed with so much boner worthy stuff. And since you're a flatlander, I should warn you when you get to Chincoteague there's things in the water that will eat you.;)

Have a great time on your prenuptial honeymoon.

Edit: Philly to Wallops Island, 178 mi, 3 hours 38 mins, of course coming north that 3.5 hours would just be the beginning, but if someone wanted to go down for a visit, it's not that bad a drive. Plus as soon as you hit the VA line you can get cheaper cigarettes.

Pics of nerdgasm please.

And any other gasms that happen to happen...

Ibby, we'll be in DC until Friday AM, then we'll drive South down the coast. Therefore, there's a four evening window of opportunity. Wallops is on the way to Chincoteague, and Bruce...I'll maybe wade in up to my ankles. Not planning on feeding anything intentionally or otherwise! There will be pics nightly as long as I'm coherent.

Well I'll be on Cape Cod where the 20 to 30 foot Great Whites have been hanging this summer, and I ain't gettin' nothin' wet... in the ocean.;)

dammit! I won't be able to meet you IRL Els! You'll be twenty min. away from me this morning at the WPAFB!!! be SURE to ask to see the aliens (project Blue Book was held at Wright-Patt) and don't let them put you off or say some BS about "no aliens around here!" coz it's all a lie as anyone who has lived in East Dayton will tell you) but have fun. Wish you could've stayed a day so we could've met up.

dammit, bruce! I WANNA go to Cape Cod! what part are you heading off to? take pics!! and if you can get to Race Point Beach- do it! (it's in P-town, don't know if you're going up that far)

I'll be staying in Harwich, but all over the cape with a group of about 20 SSR trucks. I've been committed to this for 8 months, otherwise I'd be in DC in a heartbeat. :(

I somehow missed this thread before now. It would be cool to meet you in real life, Patrick! I'm pretty busy Monday and Tuesday, and evenings can be a challenge, but any chance you will be available to meet somewhere in downtown DC for lunch on Wednesday or Thursday?

When/where is your tentative meetup with Pie? I think she lives up in Maryland somewhere. Is she coming to DC?

Hopefully we can work that out, sir. I'd enjoy that. I forgot that you work in DC. Whereabouts do you work, more or less?

I'll PM you my cell # and you can text me, and we'll try to make arrangements.

I'm near Chinatown, right by the convention center, but I can get to the touristy areas in about 10 minutes so I could meet you by the Smithsonian museums on the Mall pretty easily. The Spy Museum and the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum are just a few blocks from me if you are going to those.

We drove right by the Chinatown "entrance" this afternoon. Not on purpose, but because we were having an argument with the GPS. So Wednesday or Thursday are the best days for you?

Impressions of Washington DC, Day One:

1. This city is positively teeming with people. People of every physical description are everywhere, walking, driving, riding bicycles, riding scooters, hawking wares from the sidewalk, wheeling children about in prams, going, being, doing. It is utterly unlike anyplace I have ever been before in terms of sheer numbers and activity level. So far, my face to face experiences with everyone have been uniformly civil and pleasant, and for that, I am grateful.

2. Traffic and street layouts are insane. The street grids make the highways look mundane and normal by comparison. Getting anywhere from anywhere else requires gyrations that are utterly non-intuitive. Even our GPS system was taken aback, delivering guidance in what I swear was a confused, hesitant manner. There is no readily apparent North or South, Left or Right. Just when you think you know where you are, where you've been, or where you're going, they throw a traffic circle at you wherein as many as six streets converge in a maelstrom of vehicular chaos. I visualize the people who had to figure out the traffic signals and pedestrian walk light sequencing as being wizened, slightly crazed mystics, laboring in a dungeon somewhere, using equal measures of Art, Magick and Science to produce a result that barely keeps from bringing the entire city to its knees. Oh...and when the light turns green – GO! GO NOW! GO RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!! If you don't, a horn will honk from behind you in .5 seconds or less, or a car will roar around you, and veer wildly into your lane at breakneck speed...while every other car around you is standing still.

3. Everything is under construction. Let me reiterate...*EVERYTHING* is under construction. If you go 500' without seeing a building being restored, an enormous foundation being dug, a multiple lane closure, or ancient masonry being tuckpointed, braced and rejuvenated...you most definitely aren't in Washington DC. Even the zoo had four or five areas in different phases of construction or restoration. There are dozens and dozens of miles of obviously brand spanking new umpty-lebben lane highways and bridges that clearly cost billions upon billions of dollars, and still everywhere you go more are being constructed. Staggering. The scale and breadth of construction in this town is mind boggling. As we drove past the Washington Monument (under construction), I looked to the horizon beyond and was distracted by the biggest crane I have ever seen in my life, looming like an alien thing over the Capital rooftops. If it had spouted a mile long tongue of fire, I would not have been even slightly nonplussed.

4. Sirens. Driving inside the Beltway, there was a police car, fire engine, or ambulance on an emergency call - approximately every five minutes or less - for which we had to move out of the way. This is no small feat in the ubiquitous traffic. Most disquieting (see what I did there?) is the fact that you cannot tell from which direction the siren is coming...the sound reverberates off of all the buildings and surrounds you in a non-directional blanket of cacophony. At one point, a hook and ladder truck screamed up to a park area (in the center of a traffic circle wherein six streets intersected, of course), and pulled into the inside lane as the rig commander said, over the PA, “Is anyone in this park sick? Hold up your hand if you are sick! Someone in this park called for an ambulance. (Pause) Does anyone in this park have a friend who is sick? Hold up your hand.” And then, on cue, an ambulance screamed into the traffic circle from one of the six directions, and we had to stay out of it's way.

5. Finally, something that was intensely personal for me. I have wanted to see this city since I was a child. Tangible pieces of every bit of Americana I have ever been taught, shown, read or heard about since I was a wee laddie, reside here. At the moment of my first real life sighting of the Washington Monument, The Jefferson Memorial, The Tidal Basin, The Capitol Building...everything became somewhat surreal and ethereal for me. It was almost as if my mind, upon seeing the reality of structures that had heretofore only been photos in my experience, retreated to a familiar and comfortable place of its own making. I literally squeed a couple of times. “The Jefferson Monument! The Capitol Dome! The Mall! Squeeeee!” For me, it all comes down to this: the Reality of this nation may have dissolved into greedy corporate proxy wrangling for money. Half of our legislators may be pandering to religious zealots and the other half drooling in their shoes. Our People may be lazy, spoiled, inarticulate, uneducated, disillusioned and stressed...but the symbols of our ethos still shine gloriously. The concepts represented by these great structures and the memorials honoring those who brought forth this nation still endure in my heart and mind and spirit, and I am giddy to be here.

Wednesday and Thursday are best for me. Thursday is a little better than Wednesday, because I just found out I have to plan a department cupcake party Wednesday afternoon, so I can't take a long lunch Wednesday. Just a regular one. (Apparently it's paralegal week, so we'll have cupcakes to celebrate.)

If you find yourself with a little free time and happen to be in the vicinity, two places that most people don't visit and that I highly recommend are the tower of the Old Post Office building (you have to go through airport style security to go up the tower because it would be a perfect spot for a sniper.) The entrance to the tower is down in the food court open area and you take a glass elevator halfway up and there are some stairs too. Very cool views. And with the Washington Monument closed, it's the only game in town.

And the other thing is the National Building Museum. It's a very cool old building with a rich history. The building itself is free, but if you want to see pretty boring exhibits you have to pay an arm and a leg. The whole point of going is to check out the building. Wander all around it on all levels and make sure to check out the men's room by the cafe. One of my favorite places in DC. (Not the men's room, but the whole building.)

I know what you mean. I teared up at the Viet Nam war memorial, even though I didn't personally know anyone who died in the war.

Elspode, what a great post ...

It's wonderful to read about your feelings, and stirring up my own such feelings of awe on visiting D.C.

Thank you.

Yeah. Elspode can write. I really enjoyed the post too. The traffic is crazy here and even though I've gotten used to it, it's wonderful to hear it described by a visitor. It's all true. I'm amazed he drove downtown.

Word.

Glatt, Thursday should work well. We will be back in town all day (our last day here in DC proper), having been a bit less certain about our schedule tomorrow once we've polished off Udvar Hazy first thing in the AM. I encourage you to PM me your phone # so I can text you our lunchtimeish locale on Thursday. We will be coming in from National Harbor on the Green Line, probably to arrive at Archive Station again due to its proximity to the museums we've yet to see. Time allowing, we might do the second half of our day tomorrow using some of your recommendations.

There is so much to see in this town, you'd really need, like, a month to take it all in appropriately. I could *easily* have spent a week just in the Natural History Museum alone.

Washington, Day Two

Today, in order to allow our psyches to recover from the stimulating, yet unnerving, driving experience of yesterday, we rode public transit into DC. It was a good decision. After I ramble on about where we are staying, I'll tell you why.

Our lodgings are on the South side of the District of Columbia, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, in a new megabucks area known as National Harbor. It is an utterly "created" locale, with nothing here being over four years old, according to what I've read. It reminds me very much of two similar developments back in KC - a shopping district called Zona Rosa, and our major downtown refurb known as The Power and Light District. There are a couple of hotels here, a convention center, and a bunch of trendy shops and restaurants, all seemingly brought forth with a scoop of the backhoe and a wave of a wand. We haven't taken a meal here, but I'd be willing to bet my ass that you can't get a bowl of soup anywhere in this district for less than $15.

There is no context for what now stands at this location...whatever was here before on the West bank of the Potomac as it begins to stretch wide into it's estuarine guise was long ago scraped away and buried, leaving several still-empty, perfectly laid out flat lots awaiting a gallery or a chain restaurant, and any number of upscale money pits newly grown and awaiting fresh money. Cirque du Soleil has a sprawling installation of modern tents just up the hill from where we are, having arrived some months ago to enthrall the masses with their neuvo aerial and dance performances, and to draw people from the urban core out to this area that is just now inventing itself. At some point in the not too distant future, the Cirque folk will literally fold their tents, and move on, leaving the developers of this area and those who produce attractions out of nothing to continue their labors, hoping against hope to make National Harbor a destination worthy of the historic town upon whose back it rides.

It was from this beautifully sited but artificial locale that we departed this morning on a bus, bound for the Green Line train, headed to the National Archives. Fittingly, our stop was called "Archive", as you emerge from beneath the city directly opposite the imposing structure that houses our founding documents.

DC has a unified payment solution they call a "Smart Card", and it is a damn fine thing. You order your own card online, paying a flat fee to institute the service, and you soon receive in the mail a physical card that is RFID enabled, with your initial fee minus a setup charge encoded on it. Wave this card over the device on the bus or the train, and you log into the transit system. If a bus, it subtracts a flat fee. If a train, you wave it again as you leave the station of your disembarkation, and you are charged the appropriate fee relative to your departure point. Devices much like ATMs are everywhere so that you can add value to your card as needed. Technologically very impressive, and convenient beyond belief.

The buses we rode were clean and modern, as were the trains. The trains and the system of subway tunnels and stations which they traverse are remarkable, shining examples of both efficient modern electrical and computer technology, as well as icons of tunnel boring systems and uniformity. However, transit is transit. What struck me most was a physical phenomenon that I could have only experienced here in DC.

When we arrived at the Archive Station, our small band assembled at the fare machines near the escalators that led up to the level of the streets from the station. It was a large oval opening with three escalators rising/descending from it, probably some 80' across and twenty feet high. It was raining in the above ground realm, but, as I stood at the base of the escalators, waiting for my companions to sort out their card situations, I felt an airflow steadily rising from above, seeming to blow downward into the subway. I thought at first that it must be windy above, but looking upward, I could see the flags of the Navy Memorial fountain, and saw that they did not move in concert with the airflow I was feeling.

I thought nothing of it...for a couple more minutes. Then, I heard a train screaming into the station from a distance away. The louder and closer it got, the more the airflow from inside the station began to push outward, increasingly flowing around me as I stood still and aware. When the train departed the station a minute later, the opposite was felt...the airflow gushed in from above/outside, and into the station.

As we rode the train into DC earlier, we could feel the pressure on our eardrums increase as we went through tunnels. It was clear that the trains acted as a piston in these confined spaces, increasing the ambient pressure. So, as I stood at the exit to Archive Station, I was finally experiencing the whole of the physical phenomenon...arriving trains pushed the pressurized air ahead of them, and out of the station through the biggest opening available...the main entrance/exit. When the trains left, their speed and girth plowing through the tunnel ahead did the opposite job, creating an area of negative pressure behind them, and drawing a gale inward.

As my companions finished their labors at the fare machines and walked over, ready to ascend the escalators, I felt compelled to make them stop and wait, without explanation, so that they could have the same experience I was having.

They enjoyed the miniature lesson in aerodynamics as much as I had upon learning it was there for the taking.

I promised nerdgasm pics, so here's one, then I gotta go to bed. I know there are Discovery Channel nerds here, and for those who enjoyed "Meteorite Men" as much as I did, the top pic is the oft-referenced "Tucson Ring" meteorite.

For the aircraft nerds amongst us, the bottom pic is from the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson in Dayton..."Bock's Car", the B-29 that delivered the second atomic bomb over Nagasaki.

This is awesome. Most people are totally oblivious to the wind caused by the trains. You're here one day and notice it and describe it perfectly.

It's most pronounced under and near the rivers, because in other locations, they put in vertical shafts to relieve the pressure. It's more efficient when the trains don't have to push a mile of air in front of them to get where they are going.

For those of us over here who think of America as one place, it is really interesting to read these descriptions written by an American tourist in America! :)


Sent by thought transference

It's also fun, as a lifelong DC resident, to read descriptions of the city from another perspective.

Wish I could meet up, but I'm out of town for a couple weeks.

I didn't notice this thread until just now. I don't really know you but you might pass me on the closed-off street if you visit the White House. I'm in the building with Albert Gallatin out in the fenced courtyard.

By the way, if you need lunch/dinner and have a good food budget, Old Ebbitt Grill on that corner... a bit pricy but gooood.

Just came back from lunch with Elspode at the Smithsonian.

He's as laid back and cool in person as he is in the Cellar. I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures, but Tree Fae got one or two and hopefully they should be up tonight or tomorrow.

Nice to meet you, Splode!

@Spode I almost feel as if you were describing London at some points. I'm sure the construction work would have been true this year (Olympics) too.

The transport card device is the same here too, and in many European cities. I budgeted to buy one in Amsterdam, but on my first morning I realised how much closer together things were than I had expected... so I spent the money elsewhere ;)

Gorgeous writing, a feast for the brain, thank you very much. I had almost forgotten why I missed you so much.
Can't wait to see photos.
And yes, it's an ambition of mine to see the War Memorial (featured in so many American novels I have read) and the Jefferson Memorial - I'm a big fan of your third President.

I'd also love to show you (and many other Merkin Dwellars) around London.
Lucky Glatt that he got to meet you on his manor.

I was inordinately pleased to meet Glatt IRL today! It was brief, but awesome. How I wish I could travel more and meet more of you Dwellars. It was a fine time, and we have enjoyed our time in DC beyond all rational belief. Tomorrow AM, we saddle up, and head South down the coast to spend some time at Chincoteague Island.

What a great picture! Someday we'll be able to do a Kevin Bacon game of Dwellar photos... Glatt was in a photo with Els, who was in this other photo with wolf, who was in a picture with classic, etc...

S'awesome!

Worlds Collide!

Exactly! Kind of weird to finally meet one of you imaginary people in real life, but really cool. I'm so glad I got a chance to meet Elspode and Tree Fae.

As I left them in the museum, I was walking out with one of his friends who now lives in DC and who had also met him for lunch, and found myself trying to explain the Cellar to her and how I had known Splode for around 9 years but had never met him person.

Two of my favorite people. Nice, very nice. :)

Wonderful photo, wish I had been there too.

I can take part in the Cellar Photo Game if you include family.
I have been in a photo (a few) with my Mum. As has Ali.

Otherwise my links come to a dead end in Britain.
Although I have sung a duet with LJ.

Great photo guys!

After getting lost in DC one last time, we finally found our way to the right Southbound highway. True to form, we misread a GPS instruction, and ended up cruising about 45 minutes through DelMarVa Penninsula forestland before finding our way back to Virginia Highway 13...an agreeable detour. After a bit longer drive than we'd hoped for, we ended up on Chincoteague Island.

After a quick perusal of a "Four t shirts for $10 emporium", we headed to Chincoteague Harbor (tiny...smaller than many marinas I've seen). We took an *awesome* guided boat tour, just the four of us, Captain Jay, and his apparently new squeeze, Chrissie. $25 a head for about 2.5 hours cruising around Chincoteague, Assateague, and distant views of the Wallops launch facilities! Best value we've gotten for our money for *anything* on this trip so far. At our request, we motored out to the last channel marker, the one that demarcates, for all intents and purposes, the end of the Chincoteague Channel and the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean. You could literally tell the difference between the relatively sheltered channel area and the ever-opening seaway. The winds were much higher, and two foot swells rocked us solidly up and down.

At one point, Cap'n Jay idled us up next to a friend's oyster and clam operation, and then told us the guy also had a restaurant on the island. Needless to say, that's where we had a magnificent, locally produced seafood dinner. Fresh New England clam chowder, home made rolls, locally grown salad, and an assorted fried seafood platter as the main course - scallops, clams, oysters, flounder and shrimp. The breading was barely there...thin and perfect, so that there was no unnecessary retention of the cooking oil. The entire meal was so lightly seasoned as to almost not be there, so confident in the quality of the seafood was the proprietor. Not only the best seafood meal I've ever had, but one of the best meals I've *ever* had.

Despite Chincoteague clearly being a touristy place, it retains its authenticity, right down to it's little barrier island core. I'm sure that it is crammed and irritating during the height of tourist season (I don't even want to think about what it must be like when 50,000 people descend upon it for the pony swim), but today, despite absolutely flawless weather, there were very few tourists besides ourselves in evidence. If you'd ever told me I'd be cruising Chincoteague Channel in a 20 foot pontoon boat in October, I'd have said you were nuts, but it couldn't have been any more superb. We watched cormorants and other birds diving and feeding all afternoon long, egrets stalking the marshy shorelines and sand bars. We saw the path taken during the legendary pony roundup each July, and even got to see the last few yearlings that didn't sell at auction still being kept in the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Service's pen.

We left just after sunset, and headed to the bitter end of the DelMarva, and across Chesapeake Bay via the extraordinary construct known as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, and landed in Virginia Beach. And here I sit now, comfortably ensconced in a beachfront, but cheapass ($70 for four people!) Travelodge. In the morning, we'll get up and do a bit of beachcombing, then head West, seeing what we can along the way.

I promise to share more nerdgasm pics when I get home and have time, but in the meantime, enjoy these two from today. Sunset across Chincoteague Channel, and your intrepid travelers, with The Assateague Light in the background.

Very nice. Quite the contrast from downtown DC.

so nice. great travelogue, please continue. :)

For the life of me I can't figure out why our Elspode isn't a rich and famous author... at least notorious. :haha:

It's really strange that from all the pictures and TV, most of us have a pretty good notion of what the biggies in DC look like, but seeing them in person is so very different. An experience you described so well.

Reading your reaction to the Eastern Shore, the Atlantic, the fresh seafood, et al, got me thinking about the first time, actually the first couple of times, I drove cross country through the great wide open where you live. When I got home I laughed at how many times I panned my Super 8 Bell & Howell from horizon to horizon. So damn big!

Oh, you're right about Chincoteague in the summer. A few years ago my foreman retired and I volunteered to help him move from DE to his place on Chincoteague Island. Hot as hell July day, we just finished loading and the sumbitch has a heart attack on us. They take him to the hospital and his son-in-law and I are left to take the trucks to Chincoteague and unload. Driving from Wilmington, DE, down to where rte 175 cuts off 13, was faster than from there onto the island. :smack:

This. F'in great writer our Spode.

As always, you're all much too kind. There will be more posted about this amazing trip soon, but tomorrow I am to wed, so I will be busy for a bit.

Pics and prose... or it didn't happen !

Wait, WHAT???

You just slipping that in as an excuse to delay a holiday write-up? :lol:

Yeah, I guess I did kind of leave this thread hanging just a mite. Yet another sin of my prolonged Cellar absence.

Indeed, Tree Fae and I were legally wed on October 13, 2012. My most excellent friend and literally world renowned Pagan scholar Mike Nichols presided. The couple behind us are Rich and Kathie. I was their best man some 30 plus years ago. I was, in fact, Rich's best man at his *first* wedding some ten years before that.

I'll dribble a few DC pics in here, starting with Udvar Hazy. First up, the coolest aircraft ever to fly, the SR 71 Blackbird. Look in the background and you'll see the Space Shuttle Discovery, which had only been installed at Udvar Hazy for a couple of months when we visited. I believe that that Glatt posted some shots of the day it flew a couple of parade laps around DC before being delivered. At least, I know he posted some on FB.

Next up, the legendary Dash 80, Boeing's prototype of the 707. This is the very aircraft that Tex Johnston used to perform two glissades (a one-g slow barrel roll) over Lake Washington during the hydroplane races, and before an assembled crowd of airline execs and military buyers. It is sometimes said that this unannounced demo sold more airplanes than anyone had dared hope. In an interview I saw once, Tex claimed that he had a cup of coffee in a holder in the cockpit, and not a drop was spilled.

During a stopover at an air station in England, I watched an SR-71 pilot practice touch and go. The first couple passes he touched the wheels down; then, accelerated climbing only enough to go around again. On the third pass he touched down; then, accelerated lifting the nose rapidly until the aircraft was nearly vertical still over the runway and hit the afterburners shooting straight up until out of sight ... like a rocket man! :cool: