Spent the night in my reasonably quiet Walmart parking lot with at least ten flies in my van. That’s how many I can see right now while typing this. I think I got all the mosquitoes during the last leg of my drive yesterday, trapping the little bastards in the corner of the windshield – chasing bugs with one hand while driving with the other, not a recommended technique. Those wildlife refuge nature drives are fun, but you need the windows open for good visibility, and when you slow down to look at something all the bugs in the area go for your scent. I really do prefer fall weather, and this is yet another reason why.
Since i will have the amenities tonight at Peggy’s, I do not go to the local Panera this morning to suck on their wifi (when did these places take over the eastern half of the country??), but instead go to a good ole diner and have a good ole diner breakfast. I have about 3 hours to do a 1 hour drive, so no big hurry.
I detour a little around the islands preceding the Bay Bridge, just because I can. It’s all so familiar from thirty years ago, kinda eerie. I make my 1PM appointment with the Sprinter folks forty minutes early! It was not at all what I expected, it was an office building in the front with corporate offices and people in ties. In the back however was a pretty huge operation – they were working on six school buses simultaneously – so it was a big shop. The last set of bays had a coupla Sprinters, so I felt better. It didn’t cost as much as I feared and everything on the engine side was just as it should be, but sadly the guy smelled propane, which means I probably do have a problem with my LP system that I will need to deal with.
So I am loose on the world at 2:30, and Peggy doesn’t get home til 6:45. Approaching DC I get the inspiration to drive straight up the gut and check out my house of the 70’s, my first difficult taste of home ownership, at good ole 1349 East Capitol St SE. I wanted to do it, and I gambled that I could get ‘er done and get out of downtown before serious rush hour.
The house looked pretty good. They are still using the second floor shutters that I installed 32 years ago! The neighborhood seemed considerably more yuppified that it was then. I feel really comfortable in DC. I drove past Union Station and up North Capitol to Georgia Avenue, and a few traffic jams later, here I am in Peggy’s driveway in her lovely Silver Spring neighborhood.
We eat at a Burmese restaurant tonight. Peggy is a great cook, but is not in that mode right now, so we always ate out, and every place we ate was interesting and good and different from all the other places.
Friday
Got a ride into the city with Peggy, which put me at 13th and L St. Today is to be Smithsonian Day. I walk over to 9th and G-ish, to go to the new American Art Museum, but … this one opens at 11:30, unlike all the other Smithsonians which open at 10. So I blow this one off and head on down to the mall.
First up is the Natural History Museum. I spent my time in the Oceanography section. The coolest thing was this globe display, showing ocean currents, earthquakes zones, that kind of stuff. I just loved it. I went up a level to an room dedicated to the island of Cyprus. Cyprus has been a player on the Western culture scene for like 7,000 years, so it was quite interesting and yes, educational!
I wanted to get to the art, so across the mall to check out the underground Sackler Museum. I was intrigued because that is also the name of the new Harvard Museum I went to two weeks ago. So Mr. Sackler must’ve been really rich! This place was really confusing so I got pissed at headed back above ground to the Hirshhorn, which was my hidden gem favorite when I lived here in the 70’s, and was fun again today.
The featured exhibit here was the work of some guy named Kuitca, an Argentine who is really a Ukranian Jew, whose family escaped from Odessa in the early 20th century. I had never heard of him, and the works they chose for the ads didn’t move me, but in person I really thought the guy was cool. Some very emotional works about oppression and racial cleansing (think Guernica), some very analytical/architectural works, all kinds of stuff. I did a lap around the third floor also, there was a lot of stuff I remember from 30 years ago! The Clifford Still room, the Giacomettis, the Calders (Calder never fails to mesmerize me), blah blah blah.
I continued east on the mall, because that is where they are setting up for the rally tomorrow. Right there is the new American Indian Museum, which Peggy said has the best food, so there I went. The food was quite good, basic native food all gourmet’ed up, but the word is out; it was also quite crowded. Did a quick loop – the building is really cool, and the exhibits looked OK, but not cool enough to keep me from heading on to the art museums.
So .. across the mall again, gawking at the rally setup. I started in the East Building of the National Gallery (which is not a Smithsonian oddly enough!). I am getting seriously fatigued, I’ve been standing and staring at things for 5 hours already. There was a Edvard Munch exhibit that was awesome. Thence to the West Building which is ridiculously huge. I went to the second floor and just wandered around in a daze till they kicked me out at closing time.
Trudged allll the way back to 13th and L, drove with Peggy to pick up two friends of hers, and we ate at a really fun Turkish restaurant in Georgetown.
Saturday
Rally Day! She goes to her morning yoga class, so we don’t get going till 11-ish. Walking through the city down to the mall was quite exhilarating, there were so many happy people all heading the same direction! There are so many people! I heard very little of the show and saw nothing, but it sure was great on CSPAN that night. I’ve listened to Stewart’s closing speech four times now and it moves me to tears every time.
Made it back to the car. DC is always changing in terms of which neighborhoods are up and which are down. Actually it’s mostly up, new area get gentrified and the poor folks move to the poor suburbs. I bring this up now because we stopped for a beer at a place that was a lower-class black folks neighborhood bar when I lived here, and is now a hipster/yuppie hangout. It reminded me of the Mission in SF. And of course back when it was built 60 years ago it was probably a middle class white hangout, so there you go.
We ate excellent hamburgers across the street from the AFI theater. Pretty darned nice life in Silver Spring.
Sunday
Take it easy day. Drive to the mall in Wheaton for really excellent dim sum. Back home to watch football and baseball (Giants victory in game 4!), and eventually get my first glimpse of the 2010 Warriors on an internet feed. The got clobbered by the Lakers, but still, it was good to see the new players, even if in very low res and playing very badly..
Leave a Reply