Instead of trying to post a really long entry about my experience in DC for the Nation's Tri, I'm gonna split it into a bunch of smaller stories.
As (almost) always, I waited until the morning of my flight to do my packing. Of course, that's the reason why I picked an afternoon flight--so I wouldn't be rushed to pack quickly in the morning. Despite the somewhat scary date (September 11th), the flight went great and John even brought a nice warm cookie back from first class for me. (YUM!!) Some people recommended "Super Shuttle" to me, but fortunately John was familiar with them and had arranged for a car service once we arrived. Iris wasn't so fortunate and spent an hour and a half on the "Super Shuttle" the day before. We had our share "fun" with our driver too though. Despite the fact that he kept using English words, he had absolutely no grasp of the language. I asked him three times in different ways "How long will it take to get to the hotel?" and never did get an answer out of him. Once we got to downtown DC, a bunch of streets were closed for resurfacing and the guy couldn't figure out how to navigate. In the end, he followed a paving truck onto a street where the top had been removed AND THEN STOPPED FOR THE STOPLIGHT! So we're sitting there somewhere that we clearly shouldn't have been and 2 huge dump trucks are waiting for him to get out of the way and he just stopped. All 3 of the other adults in the car start screaming at him to go, but he won't. To recap, the street is BLOCKED, so by running this red light, he's in absolutely no danger of getting in an accident (well--unless some other driver who is as easily confused comes plowing through the cones). We finally get through the light and the driver starts babbling about how he couldn't run the light because he can't get in trouble with the police again. I didn't even try to get him to elaborate on that. We did make it to the hotel safely, though I'm not sure if John tipped the guy after all this insanity.
I met up with everyone else already there (Iris, Coach, and John C.) and grabbed a quick meal at the hotel bar. Iris told us that she and Sarah were doing a midnight bike ride around DC. This sounded quite foolish to me, but after I thought about it for a while, I realized this sounded like an incredible adventure that I just had to go on. My instincts were correct--the bike ride was incredible!! There was almost no traffic, so we rode in the middle of the street by all the national landmarks. Everything of interest was nicely lit and it was just amazing to see everything in person that I've only seen in the movies. One of the first things we did was ride to the Capitol:
I really wish I had gotten a picture of the makeshift camera stand. Iris and I leaned our bikes into each other, then I carefully perched my camera on one of the seats and used the camera's timer. Right outside the lawn is the Capitol Reflection Pool and as I we rode past that, I made many comments about how that would be a great place to get a picture of me skinny dipping. I had heard stories about such activities at PacGrove with the rest of the team already and was jealous that I missed out yet again. We decided that although there wasn't a great deal of visible security, I should probably wait until after the race in case I end up in jail for it. As it turned out, I was the last person in town, so after my mom left and I was ready to get freaky, there was no one left to take a picture. I certainly didn't want to hang around forever trying to get a shot setup by myself with the auto-timer.
After this, we rode on to the Washington Monument. Since we were there on September 11th, the circle of flags surrounding the monument were all at half mast. There was a nice steady wind, so the flags were blowing nicely:
We rode up to the base of the monument and spent a lot of time there. As we stood there quietly listening to the flapping of the flags, it began to gently rain on us. I knew static pictures couldn't capture the feeling of this place, so I shot some video:
We rode around a little longer, then returned to the hotel after 1 in the morning. Overall, this was a great first day of the trip!
As (almost) always, I waited until the morning of my flight to do my packing. Of course, that's the reason why I picked an afternoon flight--so I wouldn't be rushed to pack quickly in the morning. Despite the somewhat scary date (September 11th), the flight went great and John even brought a nice warm cookie back from first class for me. (YUM!!) Some people recommended "Super Shuttle" to me, but fortunately John was familiar with them and had arranged for a car service once we arrived. Iris wasn't so fortunate and spent an hour and a half on the "Super Shuttle" the day before. We had our share "fun" with our driver too though. Despite the fact that he kept using English words, he had absolutely no grasp of the language. I asked him three times in different ways "How long will it take to get to the hotel?" and never did get an answer out of him. Once we got to downtown DC, a bunch of streets were closed for resurfacing and the guy couldn't figure out how to navigate. In the end, he followed a paving truck onto a street where the top had been removed AND THEN STOPPED FOR THE STOPLIGHT! So we're sitting there somewhere that we clearly shouldn't have been and 2 huge dump trucks are waiting for him to get out of the way and he just stopped. All 3 of the other adults in the car start screaming at him to go, but he won't. To recap, the street is BLOCKED, so by running this red light, he's in absolutely no danger of getting in an accident (well--unless some other driver who is as easily confused comes plowing through the cones). We finally get through the light and the driver starts babbling about how he couldn't run the light because he can't get in trouble with the police again. I didn't even try to get him to elaborate on that. We did make it to the hotel safely, though I'm not sure if John tipped the guy after all this insanity.
I met up with everyone else already there (Iris, Coach, and John C.) and grabbed a quick meal at the hotel bar. Iris told us that she and Sarah were doing a midnight bike ride around DC. This sounded quite foolish to me, but after I thought about it for a while, I realized this sounded like an incredible adventure that I just had to go on. My instincts were correct--the bike ride was incredible!! There was almost no traffic, so we rode in the middle of the street by all the national landmarks. Everything of interest was nicely lit and it was just amazing to see everything in person that I've only seen in the movies. One of the first things we did was ride to the Capitol:
I really wish I had gotten a picture of the makeshift camera stand. Iris and I leaned our bikes into each other, then I carefully perched my camera on one of the seats and used the camera's timer. Right outside the lawn is the Capitol Reflection Pool and as I we rode past that, I made many comments about how that would be a great place to get a picture of me skinny dipping. I had heard stories about such activities at PacGrove with the rest of the team already and was jealous that I missed out yet again. We decided that although there wasn't a great deal of visible security, I should probably wait until after the race in case I end up in jail for it. As it turned out, I was the last person in town, so after my mom left and I was ready to get freaky, there was no one left to take a picture. I certainly didn't want to hang around forever trying to get a shot setup by myself with the auto-timer.
After this, we rode on to the Washington Monument. Since we were there on September 11th, the circle of flags surrounding the monument were all at half mast. There was a nice steady wind, so the flags were blowing nicely:
We rode up to the base of the monument and spent a lot of time there. As we stood there quietly listening to the flapping of the flags, it began to gently rain on us. I knew static pictures couldn't capture the feeling of this place, so I shot some video:
We rode around a little longer, then returned to the hotel after 1 in the morning. Overall, this was a great first day of the trip!
2 Comments
Sounds like an awesome first day!!
I'm starting to think it's a conspiracy ... BriBri will never get to skinny dip!