aalgar.com

 

Day One

 

Woke up at 4AM after tossing and turning all night. I have this incredible, apparently unconscious fear of not waking up for things. This translates to never being able to sleep well when I have to be up early the next morning. The good news was, we did make it to the airport in plenty of time. It was more crowded than we expected for 5AM on a Saturday motning, but thankfully everything went smoothly. I was pretty impressed with Continental as a wghole for an uneventful and as-comfortable-as-coach-gets trip. Still, next time I really want to try this JetBlue. Comfy chairs and DirecTV are an easy sell for an antsy, claustrophobic and easily distracted fellow such as myself.

 

The advantage to being up at 4AM east coast time is that we arrived in San Diego well before noon. Granted, it was two hours till we actually made it to our hotel room (somehow my usually spatially-challenged friend Dave found it well before we did, despite the facr that we stayed here for a week only 9 months ago). In any event, the room wasn’t actually ready for us anyway, so we had to kill a little time.

 

Being, as we were, unbearably hungry, we turned to Dave for dining suggestions. He ran through a short list, identifying what he thought we might find interesting. We both stopped him at a place called Claim Jumpers, which he described as serving “oversized novelty food.” That sounded good to Lauri and I, not having had a good meal for nearly 24 hours now.

 

He wasn’t kidding about the food at Claim Jumpers. My portions and Lauri’s were sufficiently enormous, but the entertaining part was Dave’s lunch. I don’t remember what the exact name of the dish was, but the gist was “this is an enormous fucking sandwich.” The waitress warned him that it’s not nearly as big these days as it once was, but since he’d never ordered it before, Dave was safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t know what he was missing.

 

What they brought to him was, no exaggerating, at least 8 inches tall. Even if you sliced these sandwich halves in half, they still wouldn’t comfortably fit in a normal human mouth. This thing would make Dagwood cower under the table in fear. Somehow, though, he put a major dent in it, leaving only the pound or so of meat debris that fell out while he ate.

 

 

 

Somehow we managed to make it back to the hotel (good thing I got the extra-large Explorer or our newly-increased asses might have exceeded the rental’s weight limit) and found that, once again, the room was not ready. In fairness to the good people at the Fairfield Inn in Carlsbad, check-in time is officially 4PM, and we were pestering them on an hourly basis starting at about 1.

 

We had time to kill, but we were tired and weighed down by unholy quantities of food, so that seriously limited our options. I suggested we check out the used-CD store we had visited on the last trip — a store that had provided me with many new discoveries at a serious bargain. Dave and Lauri agreed, and we piled back into the Explorer.

 

As it turns out, we only made it about three feet before disaster struck. I could blame any number of factors on what happened next, but the sad truth is that I was just careless. As I reversed the vehicle, my progress was suddenly halted by a small bump, a faint “crunch” and the horrible realization that I had backed straight into a parked vehicle. It was a vehicle that was illegally parked on a “red curb,” but it was a vehicle nonetheless. I had sufficient clearance to back around him, had I actually been paying attention

 

 

 

I like to think I had the rear-view mirror turned off, and therefore didn’t see the SUV behind me. We had only moments before been joking about the apparently useless “power” button on the Explorer’s mirror. But again, I was dumb. That’s the only real explanation here.

 

 

 

i could have just driven off, but that nagging sense of decency got the better of me. I waited in the lobby to get the attention of the desk clerk, in hopes that he might point me to the owner of the vehicle, or allow me to deliver a message through him, should the owner show up in the near future. I had to wait for a customer in front of me to complete his transaction, however. Playing a hunch, I followed him as he walked out. Sure enough, the vehicle was his.

 

 

 

Here’s the sad part: he actually missed the damage, got into the vehicle and started to drive off. And I actually chased him down. Dammit, when did I grow a conscience?

 

He was upset at first, but also very insistend that we not involve insurance, which was fine by me. I got the distinct impression that he was doing something illicit, or at the very least, slightly sleazy, with the woman he had with him, but I could not prove this. Anyway, he took a check for $300 from me (a bargain as far as my limited damage estimate abilities were concerned, and Dave concurred) and agreed to drop the issue. I would, of course, have to deal with being $300 short of skimpily-planned vacation money, and with the rental people… but that would be later. Now I just wanted to engage in some serious retail therapy.

 

Fortunately, the music store provided it. I found an elusive Digital Underground CD I’d been seeking, and on a whim I picked up a greatest hits collection of Frank Zappa. I’m really glad I did that, but more on that later.

 

The store was good to us, and we eventually wandered back to a room that was finally ready for us. I even managed to park without colliding with any 2-ton objects.

 

That was pretty much our day Saturday, as we both slipped into unconsciousness soon after unpacking. It had been a long day, and we had an even longer one planned for Sunday.

 

Day Two

 

Woke up at 4AM again, but only because they call it 4AM out here instead of 7AM. (Still with me?)

 

Today is the day we visit Ridgecrest, the city in the middle of the desert in which my job expects me to work for six months starting next October. I had high hopes for the place, but they were quickly diminished… it’s about like the town in which I live now, only not near anything. Mind you, my biggest complaint about my current residence is that it’s not near anything, but I practically have the entire east coast in my backyard compared to this place.

 

The nearest town of any consequence is Bakersfield, which is a 2 hour drive. Los Angeles is 4 hours. San Diego and San Francisco are about 5. It’s a depressing little military town with no apparent comic store (or even book store for that matter!). The original plan was for Lauri and I to take up residence there for 6 months, then move out to San Diego for the next leg of employment. Now we’re leaning more toward her going on ahead to San Diego and us visiting each other on weekends for that 6-month period. Can’t say that I blame her.

 

About 20-30 miles outside of Ridgecrest, on the only road there is, we saw this ridiculous little shanty town. Dave accurately described it as such: imagine if you were cleaning out a junkyard. This is where you would actually throw the stuff you wouldn’t want in your junkyard. There were a dozen or so little shacks that looked like they were going to fall any minute, a diner that was apparently open for business, and the aforementioned junk junk. One of the shacks had a satellite dish on it, but possibly no roof. Hey, you gotta have priorities.

 

We entertained ourselves for some time, attempting to name the sad little collection of pseudo-structures. Among the better suggestions were St. Fecalsburg, Shit-cago and Diarrheasville (as in “wastin’ away again in Diarrheasville”). Yeah, it was a pretty slow trip.

 

What made it especially slow was the presence of a driving phenomenon that plagued us the entire trip and continues to baffle me: Californians’ complete inability to JUST FUCKING GO. At many points along this and other journeys, we would come to a complete bumper-to-bumper gridlock situation that would go on from anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours. Once we had cleared the jam, the result was always the same: no lane closures, no accidents, no major road shifts. It’s as if, randomly, everyone decides they like it fine just where they are and screw anyone else who needs to be somewhere.

 

I actually did that major assholish thing that I hate people doing — I passed a shitload of these freeway-parked cars on the right shoulder. I would never do this on the east coast, but something just felt right about it out there. Probably because I had been in the car for something like 14 hours at that point and I really just wanted to get back to bed.

 

I actually opened my eyes at one point, about 30 miles from the hotel, to realize they’d actually been closed in the first place. I’m not sure how long I’d been asleep, but it was sufficiently frightening enough to allow Dave to take the wheel for the remainder of the trip home.

 

Day Three

 

Adjusted to the jetlag now, we got up at about 7.

 

I woke up in a pretty foul mood this morning. Lauri says I was tossing and turning. I guess I have stuff on my mind: we wasted an entire day of our vacation driving out to the desert, and what we found — the place we’re expected to spend 6 months of our lives — was really disappointing. I very carelessly hit a guy, and I feel like a complete imbecile for it. I didn’t bring enough money with me to really have fun the way I like to, or even to feel comfortable in case of a proper emergency. (Forking over $300 to a stranger didn’t help.) I’m getting a lot heavier, my food intake increases and my ability and desire to exercise is steadily decreasing. (I spent 10 minutes in the gym and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Meanwhile, I’m shovelling in cheeseburgers like there’s no tomorrow. We’re in a land where McDonald’s actually has veggie burgers — quite possibly the most health-conscious area of the country — and I keep ordering double cheeseburgers and country fried steak.) The combined force of all this negative energy is making me irritable, which usually leads into antisocial fcelings. So unless I do something to radically turn around my mindset, I risk ruining the actual fun parts of this trip: assembling with my friends for New Years’ and other stuff. My goal for today is to quit moping and make a serious course correction before I ruin the vacation by worrying that the vacation is ruined.

 

*****

 

An hour later: made a bunch of phone calls, talked to several good friends, many of whom I have not seen in a long time. This simple (and seemingly obvious) act has made me feel tremendously better. I guess sometimes the best remedy is jumping in and facing things. We’re off now to Long Beach, to see the Queen Mary.

 

*****

 

We took the long way to Long Beach: up the coastal highway so Lauri could see the breathtaking views of the ocean she missed on our last trip out here. Eventually, with a little help from Dave, we made it to our destination.

 

The Queen Mary was built as a luxury liner for transatlantic cruises in the 30s, but was also used as a troop transport during WWII. The tour was expensive ($25 a person, though Lauri covered us), but a lot more interesting than I would have expected. I’m basically a sucker for anything historical I suppose.

 

 

 

It was Lauri’s hope that we would see some evidence of her grandfather’s passage aboard this vessel during the war. Unfortunately, according to the short film we saw, the Queen Mary carried something like 800,000 troops over the course of the war, and there weren’t a lot of pictures of individual soldiers. Nevertheless, it was an interesting diversion.

 

 

 

The drive back, despite the fact that we took the freeway, was once again long and frustrating. Either I’m more annoyed than I should be by this or I’m becoming a true Californian. I’d like to think the latter.

 

Late evening, we met up with several friends and ate in an authentic English pub called Shakespeare’s. I know it was authentic because the food was horrid but the drinks were good. I had a shot of some sort of toffee liqueur (did I spell that right?), and it was quite yummy.

 

Day Four

 

Surprisingly, dealing with the rental car people in regards to my idiotic mistake went surprisingly smoothly. I filled out like 6 blanks on a form (3 of which were my name, address and phone number), and someone glanced at what he called “a scratch.” They offered me a new vehicle, but I opted to keep the Super Star Destroyer I had drawn. I was almost starting to get used to the thing.

 

We proceeded downtown to meet our friends Ben and Jen, who were also visiting from Maryland. Their hotel had been overrun by something called The Weinernationals — a convention of weiner dogs and their owners. Being, as it was, sponsored by the hot dog chain Weinerschnitzel, the dogs were referred to only as “weiner dogs.” Not once did the word “daschund” come up.

 

The Weinernationals involved a parade of some sort, which made navigation downtown difficult. We eventually found parking and hooked up with our friends, choosing to wander down by the docks. In most cities, this is where you’d find the shiftier elements, but San Diego puts their quaint little shops down there for some reason.

 

I guess quaint shops weren’t up Jen’s alley though, because she wanted to go to the mall. Not to disparage Jen in any way, but I didn’t come 3000 miles to hang out at Electronics Boutique or Hechts. I wanted to see California-exclusive stuff, and apart from the fact that the entire mall was open to the elements, there wasn’t anything particularly unusual about this mall. So Lauri and I left, opting to hang out in our room for a few hours.

 

We eventually made our way back to Ocean Beach, where our west coast friend Jenn (note the two Ns for clarity’s sake) and several other friends from Way Back live in a sort of communal apartment complex. There, we enjoyed a fairly pleasant Mexican dinner and genuinely pleasant company. I had a lot of fun just sitting in my friend Adam’s house, discussing our thoughts on Star Wars, Tolkein and other stuff… I realize this doesn’t exactly make for compelling reading though, so I’ll end this account here. Suffice to say I was finally starting to not have a sucky time for the first time all week.

 

Day Five

 

My paycheck was deposited to my bank account today, 3 days earlier than normal. This means all my worries about money are finally over, and I can actually spend enough to properly enjoy this vacation.

 

We met up with Ben and Jenn in the morning for breakfast, and ended up eating in one of those places of which southern California seems to have an abundance. They’re generally run by hippies or some sub-group thereof, and 90% of the menu is vegetarian friendly or derives from some culture halfway across the world. I realize looking down on places like this really betrays my narrow-mindedness, but there are just some areas in which I’m not especially receptive to experimentation. I’ll try anything under the right circumstances, but when I’m hungry for a proper meal, I don’t want to risk getting something that will make me lose food from my stomach that isn’t even there yet. So I got some kind of wheat-breakfast-burrito thing, basically biding my time till we could find a Denny’s or something.

 

We met up with Jenn after that, and walked around Ocean Beach. For the first time, I was really starting to relax. I was seeing things I wanted to see (the ocean, little shops, scantily clad locals), but I wasn’t feeling pressure to continue on to the next thing. We just wandered, stopped for some coffee, and generally enjoyed ourselves, rather like two people on vacation might.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I say we weren’t feeling pressure to continue on to the next thing, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a next thing, because there certainly was. This was, after all, New Years’ Eve, and Jenn had expertly scheduled the requisite drinking for our small group of about 10.

 

And drink we did. It’s funny… I don’t like Red Bull and I don’t like Jaegermeister, but something about mixing the two together really appealed to me. That I don’t remember how many I had is a testament to just how tasty they were.

 

We all had a great time at Moondoggie’s, the bar that Jenn had chosen. I took great pleasure from 9PM onward that, where I was from, it was next year. No one else seemed particularly impressed by this. Nevertheless, we rocked in our own midnight to what was apparently a rerun of the ball dropping in Times Square, which felt like kind of a letdown. Fortunately, the festivities were not.

 

Much of this had to do with Jenn’s husband, Ian. Ian is best described as the id personified — he’s all about sex and violence. We all think it’s tremendously odd that Jenn, who is a staunch feminist, among other things, could tolerate, much less love, a guy like Ian. But they’ve been happily married for six years now, which just goes to show me why my friends listen to their hearts for love advice rather than listening to me.

 

Anyway, Ian. Ian is, like me, very ADD, but he does not enjoy the benefits of medication. Consequently, he’ll do things like chug down 5 drinks in half an hour and wonder why he’s not drunk yet. (Give it a few minutes, dude!)

 

At one point in the evening, I had the misfortune of laying eyes on Ian’s very hairy ass, while he was mooning… someone. I foolishly made a remark along the lines that the next time his pants drop, it had better be full frontal, because I didn’t want to see that again. Unfortunately, this bluff may have worked with any other friend of mine, but Ian saw it as merely a challenge. Seconds later, I found myself inadvertantly staring at Ian’s rather substantial penis. He himself was grinning broadly, and actually had to be told to put it away.

 

Eventually though, the evening caught up with poor Ian. Just prior to “last call,” he became deathly quiet, and began staring around strangely. He would pick up random objects from our table — empty bottles, salt shakers, a candle — and turn them over repeatedly in his hands, as if he’d never seen them before. And he started muttering about picking fights, which I knew full well he would do if given the opportunity.

 

So Ben and I (mostly Ben, though the Red Bull had a profoundly sobering effect on me the whole night) kept a close eye on Ian for what remained of the night. There was vomit involved — some of it on my vehicle as Ben drove us back to Jenn’s house — and Ian promptly passed out in the shower upon arriving home. Jenn assured us that this was normal, and that he was in no danger of drowning in there.

 

I ended up staying up till about 5AM local time, which I twistedly realized was 8AM (well into the work day) east coast time, hanging with my friends. A small pipe of green stuff was passed around, and I was forced, as I always am, to abstain. Such is the curse of federal employment. We watched TV, we talked, we generally enjoyed ourselves. This has been, by far, the best New Years since 2000… maybe ever. And I really needed it.

 

Day Six

 

Very little to report. Had breakfast (a normal breakfast!) in Ocean Beach, then limped home to the hotel and slept most of the day.

 

In the evening, we hooked back up with our friends and just hung out, watching TV. At one point, we ducked out for food and ended up at one of those west-coast-specific fast food chains: In and Out Burger. In and Out’s claim to fame is that they have three items on their menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers and fries. This is intended to eliminate the selection process and ideally to help them focus on doing one thing really well.

 

Thing is, apparently there’s a “secret menu” at In and Out Burger. This is how people know how to order their burger “animal style,” for instance. (“Animal style” is “with grilled onions, you sicko.) This, and other oddities, are not on the actual for-the-public menu, and I did not personally invent the concept of a “secret menu.” The cashier actually mentioned it. He was clearly a trainee, which makes me wonder if he was actually supposed to tell me about it at all. Should I be fearing for my life over this?

 

Just in case I should, here’s a link to their secret menu, just so the secret doesn’t die with me.

 

After all that, the burger was only “eh” anyway, which is good because I’m swearing off fast food in 2004. Really. As soon as we get home.

 

Day Seven

 

We had no real plans today, which is probably why it turned out so well. We spent one more day with Dave, starting with a great breakfast, continuing with a stroll down the beach that was apparently 3 blocks from our hotel the whole time, moving on to fun at an arcade (I lost against both of them at air hockey) and concluding with an outstanding Italian meal. This is another of those “believe me, I had fun, but it’s a boring story” things.

 

The Trip Home

 

The flight and drive were entirely uneventful. It’s nice to be in our home, and to see our pets. I’m a little depressed that I have to go back to work on Monday, after having been off for an unprecedented 16 days. There’s a rough year ahead, but by the end of next year, I’ll be in California. Okay, so I’ll have to wait a few more months to be in the good part of California… but the point is, I’ll be out of here. And that’s the best New Years resolution I could ever make.

 

Oh yeah, and our kitchen apparently flooded in our absence. Fortunately, we left our home and our babies in very capable hands, and they apparently put a cork in the worst of it. It remains for us to mop the floor and call the plumber. Oh, and thank all the people that prevented the situation from getting much worse. So lots of free meals are almost certainly in my future.

This was a really great idea that I never got to properly see through to the end. The problem was, I had very little time available to me that summer due to the demands of my job. And I had a hard time convincing myself to do something terrible with the downtime I did have available, regardless of how entertaining it might have turned out. I may give this concept another try at some point. Like the failed “Consumer Retorts” feature I did for the now-defunct online magazine Hackedtobits, the title is just too great not to use.

Cruel Summer — the travel feature that drops me into things I’m guaranteed to despise — is officially in full swing. Despite the fact that I actually had a pretty decent time at the Orioles game a few weeks ago, external factors are doing their part to ensure that I remain sufficiently miserable for the next few months. My job’s been getting nice and incomprehensibly hectic, promising to deliver regular, unexpected kicks to my groin for the forseeable future.

And then there’s the rain. We’ve enjoyed (if you’d call it that) liquid precipitation for something like forty of the last fifty days, usually on Saturdays and Sundays. Our beagle would get lost if we released her into our front yard, which we haven’t had the opportunity to mow since sometime around when we rolled the clocks ahead an hour. But that’s okay, because she seems to be having lots of fun wading and paddling through the standing water in our mostly-grassless back yard. And we won’t even get into the brand new bicycles I bought for Lauri and I back in March. I’m starting to worry that they may actually somehow go rotten just sitting there in the shed like that.

So, yeah. The summer’s really shaping up, and it doesn’t even really need my help. Nevertheless, as promised, I will press on, continuing to seek out activities that provoke a blend of horror, squirmy discomfort and just a pinch of morbid curiosity. Which is how we arrive at Rose’s: the only topless bar in my entire home county.

Sure, on the surface it seems like I’m copping out. I mean, how hard can it be to get a couple of guy friends together and ogle at naked breasts over mispriced cocktails? Does this fit the bill of an intended “cruel summer” when the recipient is a young, heterosexual male who enjoys the occasional social drink? Clearly you’ve never heard of Rose’s.

The thing is, I have. Repeatedly, throughout my entire twenty-year residence in this area. Rose’s Place II (as it has officially been called for at least two decades) has become the stuff of urban — okay, rural — legend in this town. But, as with so many other legends, I could never find anyone to directly corroborate the stories. It was always the friend of a guy whose brother worked as a bouncer one night, or something along those lines. All the stories of the women being in their sixties and seventies, being at least 300 pounds each, having visible symptoms of horrid venereal diseases… as believable as they might be, these stories were all entirely unsubstantiated.

All I knew for certain was that, at some point in the latter half of the twentieth century, topless bars were outlawed in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. By virtue of having been open prior to the passing of this law, Rose’s Place was officially excused from its jurisdiction — grandfathered, as they call it — and has remained the only establishment of its kind in our area ever since. Beyond that, it was all sewer alligators and sasquatch sightings: fun to believe, but not bloody likely.

Mind you, it’s easy to play the disbelieving skeptic when you’re just sitting at home. Actually stepping into the place was another matter entirely, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little hesitant. (And I think that’s how I can really tell if I’ve chosen a good subject for this feature — if I’m desperately trying to talk myself out of it as the event approaches.)

I was among friends, however. In addition to the two Guy Friends I had invited down from “up the road” (I live on a peninsula, so everywhere is “up the road” to us), I also managed to convince Lauri to come along on this little adventure. So it couldn’t possibly be all that bad. And that was the problem, in a nutshell: it wasn’t all that bad. Mind you, it wasn’t “good” by any definition I’ve ever known… but it wasn’t nearly bad enough to heckle, especially with the ruthless company of hecklers that I keep.

It was your typical dingy redneck bar: low lighting to disguise the poor sanitary conditions, a whole two kinds of beer on tap (Bud and Not Bud), waitresses with big hair and smoky voices who call everyone “hon” and brush past every male in the place with just a bit too much familiarity. And then there’s your typical redneck bar patrons, complete with mullets slicked back with Crisco, surly expressions and maybe a full set of 32 teeth between the dozen or so of them. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the old lady behind the bar — easily in her seventies, hovering near the far corner of the bar away from most of the customers, dutifully performing the usual busy work of a barmaid. I suspect this was the “Rose” spoken of on the sign outside.

The women? Yes, a bit older than most you’d expect to find in a strip club, but certainly not the septu- and octogenarians we’d been primed to witness. Each one was probably 20-30 pounds overweight, but probably had a pretty decent body ten years and six children ago. They were skanky and sleazy, sure, but this was a strip club in southern Maryland. I grew up here, and this is about what I’d have expected.

There was one black stripper who called herself “Precious” who saw fit to come over to our table and chat us up for a few minutes. I was impressed that she was the only one out of the five dancers we saw that took the time, but the whole time she was there, I couldn’t help thinking about the little poodle in Silence of the Lambs that the girl down the well takes hostage.

Yeah, we were actually kind of bored. At one point, we got into a lengthy discussion about what the most unsuitable song to strip to would be. That was good for some big laughs, but it was also a clear indication that it was time to leave.

What a disappointment. If I can’t even count on the local Haunted Whore House for a dismal time, I guess I’m really going to have to haul out the big guns. I smell a trip to New Jersey on the horizon.

“You’re going to a baseball game. In Baltimore.”

“Yes dear,” I respond. She just doesn’t get it. I’m not even sure I get it entirely.

When I came up with the concept of “Cruel Summer” — several months of deliberate travel misery for the purpose of generating more interesting writing — I thought I’d struck comic gold. But that was on paper. As my first scheduled event loomed, I began to doubt what I once believed to be a brilliant plan. My wife did have a point, after all: I hate Baltimore, and I hate baseball. Why, then, would I go to my least favorite city for a day of watching one of my bottom-five least favorite activities? And would “because it might prove entertaining” really suffice as an answer to that question?

Waking up that morning (after a night of distraught tossing and turning) to the sound of torrential downpours didn’t help matters. I wasn’t crazy about seeing a baseball game on a sunny day — I sure as hell didn’t want to get soaked while I did it, or get all the way to Baltimore only to find that the game had been cancelled. I may not have much of a life, but I certainly could produce about a dozen better things to do with a Sunday, and that’s just off the top of my head.

But I gave my word (not to mention $50 for a ticket), and being a semi-responsible adult (at least pretending really hard), I made it to the predesignated meeting area at precisely 8:30 that morning. Already waiting, or just arriving, were my travel companions: five men in their early forties with whom I work. All are married or divorced, with at least one child. Four of these men are former active-duty Marines; the other is retired from the Navy. And then there’s me. Twenty-eight. No kids, no military experience and no real desire for either. To paraphrase the old Sesame Street song, “five of these things belong together…”

But, believe it or not, I have a lot of fun with these guys at work. Mind you, they’re not drunk when this happens. So you can imagine my surprise upon discovering two large containers in the minivan that was taking us out to the ballgame. Each container was about two liters in capacity — one contained pre-mixed margaritas and the other contained pre-mixed Bloody Marys. And everyone — the driver of the vehicle included — had poured themselves a cup from one or the other.

I know I tend to repeat myself sometimes, but I really think you need to understand what I’m getting at here. These men are drinking hard liquor at 8:30 in the morning, at the start of what will likely be a very long day in the sun (assuming the rain clears). One of them is driving a minivan with five passengers in heavy rainfall for about two hours, into territory that is unfamiliar to him. And this particular person, who has only gotten about two hours of sleep since going out drinking the night before, will eventually suck down four or five of these drinks before we make it to Baltimore. I offered to drive, but was immediately accused of belonging to “the church” and promptly handed a margarita, which I set to the side.

On the one hand, this was beginning to feel like an incredibly stupid, almost suicidal, choice on my part. But adventure is what I was after with this whole “Cruel Summer” thing, and I got exactly that. If nothing else, though, at least now you can understand why I’m choosing to be vague in the descriptions of my running crew, and why I’m not dropping any solid clues as to who committed which illegal act.

Somehow we made it to Baltimore in one piece — and I determined this only by reassuring myself that I would not be in Baltimore if I were dead as I don’t actually believe in Hell. We left the van in a parking garage and I stepped out into the rainy Inner Harbor area with five guys old enough to be my dad. We had no real destination in mind — we were just out to kill the approximately ninety-six hours until game time. Don’t ask me why we set out on a two-hour car trip five hours before we needed to be there. I just did what I was told.

Naturally, the primary goal of any drunk at 10:30 in the morning (or anytime really) is to be someplace where he can acquire more alcohol. But this was Sunday morning at the Inner Harbor, an area known for its family-and-tourist-friendly attractions. Believe it or not, the paddle boat rental stand doesn’t carry beer. Nor does the aquarium, the sunglass shack or the three-story Barnes and Noble. And that tells you just how much of a geek I really am: I would have been happy hanging there till they closed at midnight.

Someone — our inebriated chauffer, I believe — got it into their heads that they wanted hot wings from Hooters, so we began combing the area. After a short stumble, we located the restaurant of choice, but (surprise!) it wasn’t actually open yet. So I grabbed a cheap, but dependable, burger from the local Johnny Rockets and continued secretly hoping for rain.

The weather was actually starting to clear at this point, so we took our stuff (they with beers they’d located from an indeterminate source, and me with my burger big enough to choke a moose) to an outside table for a little male bonding. By “male bonding,” I mean mostly listening to one particular drunken soul ramble on and on about work-related stuff. And not even good work-related stuff either — this was stuff like “how do we get everyone [the other departments outside ours] to love us?” It really was more than just a little pathetic.

Then again, it was nothing compared to the conduct displayed by this person and another in our group upon entering Hooters. Now, I have no illusions of maintaining complete dignity in this particular establishment — the servers are young, busty women in revealing outfits. Naturally, a group of heterosexual men are going to do a fair amount of ogling and perhaps a little harmless flirting. But I’d classify the behavior of the drunkest two of our group as “over the line,” to say the least. I’ve never seen the line, but I know it exists, and I’m positive ass pattery crosses it. So do inquiries into when the waitress’ shift is over, especially when they come from a middle-aged, married man. Our waitress did her best to ignore the clumsy advances, and it probably wasn’t very difficult, considering the increasingly incomprehensible speech emanating from the lips of these two.

Around this time — as the opening pitch grew near — the two gentlemen in question became pretty much the only ones continuing to drink themselves into a stupor. My remaining three cohorts seemed clear-headed and reasonable, as witnessed by the constant eye rolling that was being done in reaction to these other two. And it only got worse as we entered the stadium.

It turns out that one of them is an incredible Yankees fan, and he proceeded to tell us and the 10,000 or so other people who had gathered to watch Baltimore play Tampa Bay that every team but the Yankees could bite his intoxicated ass. At least, I think that’s what he said. Whatever the exact words were, I found myself finally developing my first strongly-held opinion of baseball: I can’t stand the Yankees now. I love New York, and you can’t argue against a team that continues to achieve the ultimate goal of their sport, but if all their fans are even 5% this obnoxious… wow. That’s still really obnoxious.

Somehow, in spite of the continuing drunken antics of 33.3% of our group (one of them, no kidding,got thrown out of a concession stand), I actually managed to have a good time. The game itself turned out to be much more interesting in person than it appears to be on television, thanks in no small part to the club-level seats we’d purchased with our fitty bucks. There was a lot more action, apparently, than one typically expects in a baseball game — 16 runs, three or four homers, and a dramatic coach with a short temper. They always make sporting events more entertaining.

So despite my incredible negative attitude, despite all my prejudices and the embarrassing conduct of a couple of cohorts, I still found myself wrapped up in nine innings of a damned close baseball game. I can’t say the game made me a fan, but I definitely have more respect for the sport than I had starting out. By the end of the game (which, unfortunately, the Orioles ended up losing), I was actually cheering good plays, singing along with some of the stadium songs and just all-around having a good time. I drew the line at singing “God Bless America” at the seventh inning stretch, though — I thought it was supposed to be “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” so that’s what I sang.

So the game ends, and we all start meandering toward the parking garage. All of us, that is, save one of our two drunkards. I’ll spare you the details — and believe me, there are many — but the gist of the story involves about an hour on cell phones, a search party and the insistence that we find another bar. Thankfully, I volunteered to make the drive home, and if nothing else ever convinced me not to have children, driving a minivan with two stupid-drunk guys babbling incoherently did the trick.

Bottom line time. What did I learn? Baseball’s not so bad. It’s the Baltimore Orioles, not the Oreos. Hooters girls are easy on the eyes, but, like in a strip club, it’s better if you keep your hands off. And, perhaps most importantly of all, it’s Shirley Temples and Cokes for me from here on out.

Okay, here’s the thing: my last few vacations have been almost entirely disaster-free. Great for me, but not much in the “fascinating reading” department. I think the problem is that my early adventures happened to me when I wasn’t prepared for travelling great distances. That, and I was young and too stupid to remember things like my airline tickets, or how to handle awkward sports cars on wet roads. I once fancied myself quite the travel writer, on account of the incredible stories I was able to tell after each major expedition. It turns out, though, that a story is only as good as the events contained within it, so short of lying about things, I’m not going to hold anyone’s interest with a report on just how pleasant it is to relax for a week in the California sun.

Hence, this little experiment. Since my writing is only really good when I suffer (all comedy, it is said, comes from conflict and suffering), and I actually have the hang of the whole “point-A-to-point-B” thing these days, the only way I’m going to generate some readable material is to actively seek out the suffering. Or, to put it another way, like some people’s parents always said, I’m going to give myself something to cry about.

Throughout the summer of 2003, I’m going to be actively seeking out things I would normally never do — things that will very likely make me absolutely miserable. You can call me an idiot (you wouldn’t be the first), but I like to think of it as “suffering for my art.” You people only seem happy when I’m not, so this is really all your faults. So watch this space in the months ahead to examine the fallout of your selfishness. And have a great summer!!

 

I used to really want to be a travel writer. Those of you who have followed my exploits across the country know that I had a rather long string of bad luck for awhile there — cars dying on the way home from Florida, endless circles in New Jersey, nauseous marital engagements in Las Vegas and the like. So while I only ventured out occasionally and then only to do things of moderate interest, the fact that every journey was a disaster, and consequently made for a hell of a story, really helped compensate for the innate dullness of any particular vacation.

But some time in the last few years, things started leveling out. I can’t pinpoint it to an exact time, but it seems to have coincided with a number of other events in my life: getting married, taking my day job more seriously, thinking about things like retirement and interest rates and paying the bills on time. I’d always feared that “growing up” would equate to a decrease in adventure in my life, and it turns out I was right.

But the thing is, “adventure,” by my definition, entails a lot of horrible experiences that end up making a great story. So while I may have compromised the entertainment value of my occasional outside world expeditions, the upshot is that I end up having a pleasant, and very rarely catastrophic, time. I’ve always been willing to suffer for the sake of my writing, but it’s never anything I’ve wanted to do deliberately. What I’m trying to say, in my usual rambling (yet somehow endearing, don’t you think?) way, is that the following account isn’t particularly exciting in the usual dramatic sense. Part of me apologizes, but the larger part of me — the part that’s happy to have an incident-free vacation — just can’t manage feeling sorry for enjoying itself. Happiness and relaxation follow; you have been warned.

The destination in question this time was southern California — last seen by me five years ago (see my epic account in my book, The Sarcastic Verses, for the full story), and never before seen by my wife. A number of factors made this trip possible: our fourth anniversary being a couple, a desire to take an extended vacation instead of our usual quick weekends away, the fact that we actually have more friends in the San Diego area than on the entire east coast. And then there’s the possibility that we might be moving there in a couple of years — a possibility of which I had not even been aware until I’d asked my boss for the time off a couple of months ago.

“Yeah,” he said casually, as if we’d discussed it a thousand times before, “that’s where your job is going when this program is over [2005]. You might want to start taking a look at the area.”

Bear in mind that, until this point, the only possible options presented to me by my employer following the termination of this particular government contract have been horridly uninhabitable southern wastelands like North Carolina or Texas. No one ever once mentioned the possibility of California to me. But now that the notion was on the table, the entire scope and purpose of this vacation was transformed. Now we were motivated not only by the desire to kick back and ignore our responsibilities for seven days, but also to investigate the idea of kicking back and ignoring our responsibilities for a couple of years. Call it another nail in the “growing up” coffin, but long-term house hunting somehow made this trip that much more exciting to us.

We left Maryland on Saturday, the first of March, dodging the melting remnants of a recent blizzard that had deposited nearly two feet of white stuff on the ground. I derived a sort of sick pleasure in rubbing in the details of our impending vacation to whomever I encountered — we’d be spending a week in the land of perpetual 72 degree days, we planned to visit friends who lived at the beach and oh-by-the-way, we’d rented a convertible. I may have grown up in a lot of ways over the last few years, but I think I’ll always derive a little pleasure out of a good old fashioned “nanny nanny boo boo” every now and then.

Here, now, is my travel journal for the week that followed:

Saturday, March 1
We arrived at BWI airport several hours early, not knowing what to expect in regards to the ever-changing climate of heightened airport security. Apart from an extra ten-minute delay at the metal detector and regular ID checks, it really wasn’t very different. We got on our plane, sat for a bit, then were informed that we’d be delayed due to the failure of a part that could not easily be replaced. (I thought about piping up at this point, seeing as I order aircraft parts for a living, but I’m never sure what level of joking will now be construed as a terrorist threat, so I just kept my mouth shut.) We were eventually herded out of the plane and told that we’d be making the trip on a different plane that would be arriving in a few minutes hence. Much hilarity ensued as the location of this alternate aircraft changed approximately fifteen times in eight minutes, resulting in a large mob of people tackling one another for a good spot in line. (Did I mention the first-come-first-serve seating policy of this particular airline?) There was also, apparently, a little confusion as to how to get the door to the plane open, but they eventually worked it all out.

The resulting delay only meant less time for us to wait for our connecting flight in Chicago — a good thing, considering O’Hare Airport looks, according to Lauri, like a giant dorm room, filth and all. We arrived in San Diego about fifteen minutes early — time enough to confuse our friend Dave, who was still on his way to pick us up. Dave has a tendency to wear shirts that would give MC Escher a headache, and I was hoping I’d be able to step off the plane, sporting my own hideous shirt (bought for me as a gift, especially for this trip) and make his jaw drop. Unfortunately, the accursed efficiency of Southwest Airlines made that wacky site gag impossible. I swear, even when the world is trying to be helpful, it just manages to get in my way.

After much confused circling — pretty much the only way Dave knows how to travel, I’ve realized — we found the rental car agency. We encountered a kooky character that — get this — made this great joke about my last name (“Watt”) sounding like the word “what?.” I’ve only heard this joke about forty bazillion times in my short life, but he actually managed to “zing” me with it. Blame the jetlag and circling if you must — I’m willing to fess up to just being an idiot who wasn’t paying attention.

The car was everything for which we’d hoped: a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder, with the requisite convertible top. The extra expense was absolutely worth it. I could not imagine a more appropriate vehicle for our visit.

 

Me, possibly unconsciously compensating for some perceived deficiency in the genital department. “Vroom!!”

Dave took us out for authentic Mexican food, prepared by authentic Mexicans. I didn’t tell him this, but I wasn’t all that impressed. It may be true that “real” tacos contain shredded beef instead of ground beef, but I guess I’m just a casualty of Taco Bell hypnosis. I like the Americanized version better.

We parted company relatively early (bearing in mind that it was 3 hours later to us, and that Dave had to work that night), and checked in to our hotel in nearby Carlsbad. As we trudge up to our room, I notice the California state flag for the first time. It’s a hodgepodge of communist symbols — a bear, a red star, the word “republic.” I am probably more amused than I should be by this.

Sunday, March 2
The first of many exciting days that just don’t translate well in writing. We spent most of the day driving around the vicinity with the top down, soaking in the weather, the architecture and the meticulously kept local flora. Gave Dave enough time to sleep, and then hooked up for lunch. For the first of many times, Dave turns to his sister for directions to someplace right around the corner. This is much funnier in person, trust me. Plus, his sister’s hot. Dave blathers endlessly about his recent trip to Maui, but somehow it doesn’t diminish from the sunny paradise that we’re experiencing now. In SAT terms, Maryland :: San Diego as San Diego :: Maui.

 

 

The view outside Dave’s back door. Yeah, I can see why he wants to move away from California.

 

Ate lunch, wandered a cool used CD store, played mini-golf. Really, as I mentioned, nothing that makes for an exciting travelogue — just quality time with a friend that we only see once or twice a year. Plus, stuff like this really gives us a feel for what weekends would be like if we lived here: lots of hot girls (where do they keep the ugly people here?), an abundance of entertaining things to do and several cool people with which to do them. For the first of what will be many times, we consider not returning home. The only thing that keeps us from doing this is our pets and the slight technicality that we don’t have jobs here.

Monday, March 3
Woke up at 6AM, pretty much recovered from any jetlag. However, it turns out that I’m apparently allergic to the entire state of California, and I spend the rest of the trip with a gallon or so of ectoplasmic goo lodged in the cavity behind my face. As a result, I end up making lots of noise when I sleep, making sleep for Lauri pretty much impossible. I slip out of the room very early for breakfast and a workout in the hotel’s exercise room, giving her the opportunity to catch up from her loss.

This is the only cold (well, below 60) and rainy day of the trip, which sort of drains our desire to do very much. We check out a Spanish mission (San Luis Del Rey), which I had originally considered something of a compromise to Lauri, but actually ended up being really interesting. The craftsmanship of the religious artifacts and the garden impress the hell out of me, though I can’t help wondering what all this creative energy and skill could have done had it not been in the service of forcing indigenous “heathens” to accept what I believe to be an ill-informed belief.

 

 

I’m even more impressed than I look.

 

 

Whenever I step into a church, all I ever seem to think is “what a great apartment this would make!”

 

We drove around a bit more, and eventually found ourselves inadvertently at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base where my job is supposed to be in a couple of years. There were no signs or warnings, mind you — we were just driving along and suddenly, there’s an armed Marine asking us for ID. He was the best kind, too: the kind that enjoys messing with people’s heads. “No turnarounds, sir,” he said with a completely straight face. Then he proceeded to try to sell me on enlisting. I tried explaining to him that I was already (sort of) serving, in that I was supporting helicopters flown by Marines, but he wasn’t all that impressed. It was just as well — I was out here to forget about work anyway.

After a bit more wandering, we located Roberto’s, a sort-of-fast-food establishment that came with glowing recommendations from coworkers of mine that had been stationed out here. These recommendations were well founded: for just over $2, I got a burrito that you could fit a newborn baby inside. I still would have preferred ground beef, but such is life.

Tuesday, March 4
My mother’s birthday. She and my dad, as well as my aunt and uncle, were celebrating the occasion in Las Vegas, and we thought it might be fun to “pop over” for a surprise visit. This took about five really boring hours (following a speeding ticket before I even got out of San Diego county), but the end result was highly worth it — I haven’t seen mom so pleasantly surprised in a long time.

That was pretty much the whole point of the trip, though we did soak in a little of Vegas while we were there. This being our third trip, however, it just seemed… un-magic, somehow. The gambling wasn’t all that exciting (I broke even), the buffet was okay and the lap dance I got (come on, we were in Vegas) just didn’t do anything for me. Call it the ADD if you must, but Las Vegas just bores me now. I’m glad I made my mom happy, but I can’t imagine coming back here again. Anyway, we still have lots of California left to see.

Lauri and Dave took turns driving the car back, this being probably my worst day of allergies, and I squeezed my 6’ frame into the 2’ container that was the Spyder’s back seat. We spent almost this entire day in the car — but at least there’s only a single straight road that goes through the desert. This makes it difficult for Dave to take us in circles. So at least we had that going for us.

Wednesday, March 5
Woke up feeling a bit better, though I apparently snored as loudly as ever. I again allowed Lauri to sleep in, this time going out for a drive to kill the time.

I spent a few hours cruising the coastal highway, admiring the beach, the mountains, the ocean… and, naturally, the hot women. (I’m assured that my wife doesn’t mind.) Eventually we hooked up with a number of old high school friends of mine who all migrated out here and now live in the same apartment complex about a block off the beach.

This, without question, is where I’d want to live when/if we move. Not only is it jam-packed with old friends (and new friends of theirs, all of whom seem equally cool), but there’s this incredible little town with shops and restaurants and stuff. Oh yeah, and the ocean. I waded into the Pacific about to my knees, and though it was cold, I contemplated risking the pneumonia anyway. The only thing that stopped me, really, was the fact that I had half a dozen small electronic devices in my pocket. Which, all things considered, was probably for the best anyway.

 

 

The Pacific Ocean.

 

We traipsed to Balboa Park, the central hub of culture and education in the San Diego area. I was a bit put off by the fact that the surrounding museums expect you to pay to get in (I guess I’ve been spoiled by the Smithsonian), but the actual park was pretty damned interesting. The famed San Diego Zoo also makes you pay (unlike its counterpart in Washington, DC), but they apparently have pandas here too. Did you know this? I’d always been led to believe that our east coast pandas were the only ones. Breaching the subject with my west coast pals seemed tantamount to risking some kind of panda warfare, so I just let it drop. I’m certain our pandas are better, though.

 

 

One of the buildings in Balboa Park. I guess I should have done less frolicking and more note-taking.

 

Anyway, the park. We saw a cactus garden, containing about a hundred variations on the “narrow spiky plant” motif. We checked out some pretty buildings, the requisite artsy sculptures and fountains, and I learned that the park was apparently not named for the explorer Balboa. A large plaque at the entrance claimed it was erected in honor of someone else entirely — whose name wasn’t even Balboa. I’m still trying to work this one out.

 

 

Me, my friend Adam and some water. There were a number of hot chicks just outside the borders of this picture as well. Honestly.

 

 

Clockwise from left: Jenn, Lauri, me, Adam and some large rhinestone-studded snake/crocodile thing whose name I never got. (Does this picture make me look fat, or is it my big honkin’ pot belly?)

 

Another great day of sightseeing and hanging out with friends, but once again lacking in the fascinating anecdote department.

That evening, we hooked up with Roman and his wife, Carrie. My relationship with Roman is a very peculiar one. Prior to this trip, we’d met in person exactly once, about twelve years ago, and then only for a few hours. But Roman grew up in the same town as I did, about 6 houses up the same street. The big thing we had in common was Mark, a very close friend to both of us earlier in life. Through Mark’s fascinating tales, I felt like I knew Roman better than just about anyone, despite that whole pesky “not having spent a whole lot of time with him” thing.

Roman found me a couple of years ago, while doing a web search for Mark. (I try to give credit where it’s due, and Mark’s name probably turned up a few times in reference to the creative collaborations we’d done.) So Roman and I began e-mailing, and I’m sure he was more than a little put off by the fact that I knew enough about his past to qualify as a stalker. Nevertheless, we managed to hit it off fairly well, thanks to an abundance of shared experiences and interests, and this visit was the final culmination of this bizarre phantom friendship.

Roman and Carrie (who, it turns out, is equally cool and interesting) fed us, then regaled us with the other half of the stories I’d been hearing from Mark all these years. It must have been really odd for Lauri to watch inside jokes whizzing over her head, since I was exchanging them with a guy I was only meeting for the second time. It certainly was for me.

Oh yeah, we also brought Mark’s brother, Adam — who had lived a couple of miles away from Roman for about nine months now, but hadn’t managed to call to this point. Just call me The Great Uniter. Or AAl. It really doesn’t matter.

Thursday, March 6
More driving around, a bit of lounging by the hotel’s pool. At some point, we made it to Los Angeles, but it was surprisingly unremarkable. This may have something to do with the fact that we visited a comic store and a bookstore — both enormous and easily capable of accepting large amounts of money from me — and hightailed it back out of town again. We just didn’t see anything that remotely interested us, apart from the aforementioned shops.

Plus there’s the whole driving thing. LA has this reputation for traffic congestion, and I can now personally vouch for the veracity of that reputation. However, I cannot provide an explanation for it — as far as I can tell, people just don’t go. It’s like there’s four cars — one in each lane — that want to go about 20 mph, and they end up backing up the whole damned city. We’d never stand for this on the east coast — certainly not on DC’s beltway, and absolutely not in New York City. I know the “New York and Los Angeles are so different!” thing is played into the ground, but I just had to make a note of this. I’ll take NYC’s pushy assertiveness over LA’s… whatever the hell this was, any day.

Oh yeah: four years ago today, Lauri and I met in person for the first time after getting to know one another fairly well online and on the phone. We both officially consider this the beginning of our relationship. And now, here we were four years later: happily married, jetsetting to LA to buy comic books and heckle the freaks. Yay, us!

Friday, March 7
Very little to report. By this point, we were just completely overcome by the prevailing laid-back San Diego attitude. Also, we were doing way-too-responsible grown-up things, like packing early and doing our laundry. Didn’t I tell you we’d gotten really boring?

Eventually, Dave showed up. We ate lunch, drove around… then, fell asleep. That’s right — we actually went back to the hotel room, watched a little TV, and fell asleep at about 5 in the evening. Mind you, we’re talking about a group whose average age is 27. It’s not that we’re old, or even that we had been overdoing it. I think southern California just does that to you. This wasn’t laziness — it was comfort. And as pathetic as it sounds, I really like it.

That evening, we attempted to locate Dave and Buster’s, a sort of grown-up arcade that also serves liquor. We probably would have had better luck driving to the one in Maryland, since we let Dave navigate, but we eventually found the place, after three or four calls to Dave’s sister. (“You’re retarded!” she exclaimed upon realizing why he’d called. ‘nuff said.)

The driving actually wasn’t that bad — considering that we’d voluntarily spent the rest of the trip doing pretty much the same thing — it’s just a lot of fun to harass Dave. I’d expect no less from him if our roles were reversed.

Saturday, March 8
An incident free return, apart from the difficulty in getting my suitcase — which contained a quadrillion newly purchased books and a large gift coconut that Dave had brought back from Maui — closed. Everyone we met along the way was super-pleasant, and apart from the unavoidable claustrophobia that closes in after 7 hours on a plane, it could not have gone better. We got home about an hour ahead of our expected time, happy to see the pets but otherwise missing everything else about southern California. We’re both completely ready to move as soon as my job gives the word. End of vacation.

I told you it wasn’t a very interesting story. Still, given the choice between enjoying a relaxing week in the sun and being tortured for your amusement, I hope you won’t blame me too much for choosing the former. I always have that “nanny nanny boo boo” to fall back on, if nothing else.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jen approached me and a handful of other close acquaintances with the idea of purchasing tickets to see Blue Man Group in New York City. I’d attempted to talk most of the same people into seeing them when we visited Las Vegas together last year, but the ticket prices ended up being a little over everyone’s heads. Jen managed to secure us a fairly substantial discount through her place of employment, however, and thought it would be great fun to reunite that same group about a year later.

The occasion of that trip had been my recent marriage to Mrs. Sarcasm, and Jen’s to her husband, Ben. This, she reasoned, would serve as a sort of joint anniversary trip. That excuse made the offer that much more enticing, but it really doesn’t take a lot to talk me into visiting one of my favorite places in the country.

There’s no logical explanation for why I enjoy New York City quite so much. By rights, I certainly shouldn’t — I hate crowds, I can’t stand people getting in my way and I have a difficult time focusing when I’m forced to absorb large amounts of sensory input. But something happens when these elements come together in New York — somehow, they just manage to throw it all together in exactly the right combinations.

Actually, it’s not all that hard to figure out why I get along so well up there. This is a city constantly on the move; a city that smiles upon the impatient and the easily irritated. It was the backdrop for a very successful sitcom involving four incredibly selfish and petty people, and remains the undisputed cultural epicenter of American sarcasm. Also, they make a mean pizza pie. I can’t imagine a place better suited to my specific personality and needs.

Here’s the really scary thing, though: I love driving in New York City. I have no rational explanation for this — I just enjoy the otherwise largely absent self-confidence that surfaces as I cut off taxi cabs and make left turns from the right lane. The real trick is, as with pretty much anything in life, to act like you know what you’re doing, even (especially!) if you don’t. I think everyone involved in our recent expedition was a bit skeptical when I began bragging about my vehicular proficiency within the confines of America’s largest city, but I think I’ve since proved my point. But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

Mrs. Sarcasm and I got an early start Saturday morning, making it to our friend Bob’s house by about 10 AM. There was a minor directional setback involving a sloppy bit of guesswork on my part (maps are our friends; next time I’ll check one), but we were finally headed in the right direction by about 11. Not long after that, we met up with Vicki.

Let’s make a little side trip here for a moment so I can explain Vicki. Vicki’s a coworker of mine. Actually, technically, I’m Vicki’s supervisor, but I don’t think either of us really sees it that way. (When I got the job, I remarked that I could now tell her what to do, to which she snappily replied, “yeah, then I’ll tell you what to do!”) Anyway, I’ve known her about a year, and in that time she’s easily assumed the role of “only local person worth going out with” for either my wife or me. She’s the only southern person whose company doesn’t irritate the piss out of me, and she has the greatest way of saying “goodbye” — she just abruptly becomes obviously bored with you and walks away with an “okay, see you later!”

Best of all, she has this uniquely contagious impulsiveness. In short, Vicki’s exactly the person you want to bring with you to New York City — she’d be the one making sure you’re having a proper adventure, instead of just milling about like some skittish old fogey. It didn’t take an awful lot of coaxing to get her to come along for the trip, though she could only stay for the first day. One of us had to report back to work on Monday, and I’d beaten her to asking for the day off.

Somehow, not that we timed it this way (we had planned to meet up in the Meadowlands, where we’d be setting up camp), both vehicles managed to cross paths about halfway up I-95. So by the time we were into Delaware (which, from what I can determine, exists only for residents of Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to cross through into one another’s states), we had formed a little two-car caravan with Vicki. The Jersey Turnpike can be a little tedious at times, but it’s ever so much more fun if you’re in constant cel phone contact with the next car ahead of you. We were like kids at a slumber party with a pair of walkie-talkies. Anything’s more enjoyable when friends are along, but it’s a real credit to my friends that I scarcely noticed all the smells and tollbooths that typically make passing through New Jersey such a drag.

After a minor detour around some rather Soprano-esque scenery, we eventually decided to ditch the hotel’s internet-provided directions and find the damned place on our own — which we did, in short order. We deposited our things in our respective rooms (separate rooms, aside from me and the Missus, thanks — it wasn’t that kind of a trip) and were city bound by mid-afternoon. My hands practically trembled in anticipation of the myriad lewd gestures that lay ahead.

But first, as my friend Dave from California would say, you have to pay to get out of Jersey. (Apparently California roads have no toll collection system, so Dave was rather perplexed by the whole concept when he visited our coast half a decade ago.) This particular toll ($6!) was requested of us prior to passing through the Lincoln Tunnel, and let me just say that I had every intention of paying it at the time.

The thing is, there’s this whole EZ Pass system, which allows a sort of toll subscription service for people who don’t want to be bothered with producing cash every time they go into the city. Some EZ Pass are more clearly marked than others, and some of the not-so-clearly-marked ones have no system to prevent you just driving on through without paying. Simple country rube that I am, I had no way of knowing I was in the wrong lane until I noticed the absence of a toll collector, and I wasn’t about to back into the impatiently honking car behind me. My only other choice was to jump the automotive turnstile, which I did.

The way I see it, this means one of two things: either the city of New York will employ sophisticated tracking devices to hunt me down and collect their six bucks, or else I passed some sort of New Yorker initiation rite by charging on through without paying. I suppose both could happen, but I’d rather just think the latter. I suppose I’ll find out when I’m ready to buy a house or a car and I discover a lingering six dollar stain on my credit record.

We wandered the city on a sort of car tour (pretty much as planned) for about an hour — three of us live in a city in which the highest building has four floors, so just staring at skyscrapers was actually a fairly engrossing activity. Plus, I got my chance to shine as an official New York driver, engaging in all the aforementioned illegal activities and emphatic vulgarities to (I think) the astonishment of everyone else in the car. Frankly, I don’t think I was acting so much out of character, but if I got to provide some entertainment as I enjoyed myself, that’s just wonderful.

Gradually, in no real hurry, we made our way to one end of Manhattan (downtown? Uptown? Funkytown? I’m not up on the lingo, sorry) and continued our dazed and nomadic shuffle on foot.

It took us awhile to figure out where to eat (not even suburb-dwelling Bob was quite prepared for all the choices, I think), but we ended up in some moderately-priced outdoor café down by the docks. Not the seedy “down by the docks” area, mind you — the part where they put all the shops and moderately-priced cafés. After dinner, we continued wandering, and if you were watching Telemundo that night, there’s a chance you caught a glimpse of the backs of our heads. (There was some kind of Spanish concert going on near Battery Park, but it wasn’t Ricky Martin or Menudo, so I had no idea what it was all about.)

As darkness approached and the parking meter ran out of quarters (we were only able to produce about thirty between us, which scored us about two and a half hours’ parking time), we climbed back into the car in search of a new destination. That was the intent, anyway. Clearly, the phone company had other ideas.

I won’t get into my long-standing theories about the phone company trying to take over the world, but there can be no denying that Verizon didn’t want us to leave a certain 5-block radius of Manhattan. Several blocks had been cordoned off for some Verizon-sponsored street basketball something-or-other, leading to a very circuitous and repetitive ride to nowhere. I’m not entirely sure how we finally made our way out an hour or so later, but I think it had something to do with my giving up trying to actually think about it and driving on some sort of instinct that I can only assume was The Force.

I was doing this because I was talking on my cell phone at the same time. A very old and very dear friend of mine who happens to live in New York was now home, and was returning the call I’d placed to him earlier. Talking to him not only secured our plans for the remainder of the evening, but also provided the necessary distraction for us to finally break free of the phone company’s sinister plot. (Never mind that I have a Verizon cell phone. That doesn’t disprove my theory so much as it provides ironic counterpoint or something.)

Oh, I guess I should mention this: not long after we’d broken free of the Battery Park vicinity, we found ourselves somewhat inadvertently in front of the World Trade Center site. There had been some debate among our group in the early stages of trip planning as to whether or not we actually wanted to visit that area, and the consensus had eventually arrived at a very firm “no.” (I was the only one who had actually wanted to go — not to gawk, but just to help actualize something I had only otherwise seen on television.)

There’s really nothing there to see at this point anyway, but that’s actually pretty creepy in and of itself. New York — especially that area of New York — is a very densely packed area, and the effect of one large, empty lot amid a slew of towering skyscrapers is pretty disturbing. I think we all had a year of denial to help protect us though, so the only noticeable effect was about a thirty second gap in the otherwise perpetually running smartass commentary.

But we didn’t come to New York to get depressed (hell, we could have stayed home for that) — we came to have fun. Fortunately, my friend Jason and his longtime girlfriend (with whom I have also been previously acquainted) proved quite adept at providing for our needs. We hung at their apartment for a short while, then adjourned to a nearby bar. That proved only moderately entertaining, however, so Jason pushed forth a bizarre suggestion that didn’t sound nearly as fun as it ended up being: karaoke in Korea Town.

Apparently, New York is such a staggeringly cosmopolitan city that every country in the world is represented with its own small community. There’s Uzbekistan-burg, Luxemborg-town and Little Borneo, among many others. And there’s Korea Town — home to (follow my logic here) lots of Korean people, and karaoke establishment that allow one to rent a room by the hour.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and so were we. But I remind you — it wasn’t that kind of a trip. The rooms involved a wrap-around couch, a decent large-screen TV and a karaoke machine featuring an assortment of American and Korean standards. The room in which we started was, I’m told, one of the nicer ones, but we didn’t stay long. Two or three songs in (I was in the middle of “Mmm-Bop,” as I recall), a Korean gentleman took Jason aside and informed him that this particular Saturday was, in fact, Korean Thanksgiving. Further, a contingent of persons with substantially more money than we had requested our room, and would we mind moving to a different room down the hall for a 50% discount? Being the festive and culturally respectful lot that we are, we said we didn’t mind a bit.

I’ve been trying for the last several days to explain exactly why Korean karaoke among six friends of varying acquaintance was quite the enjoyable experience it was. I’m really at a loss here — just trust me when I say we had a phenomenal time. We sang for something like four hours, and didn’t start back for the hotel until the latter half of the 3AM hour. I really don’t know why it was fun. It just was, okay? And I’m told I sing a halfway decent Sinatra.

By the time we’d made it back to our hotel beds, it was about 4:00 in the morning. Mind you, I typically get up for work around 5 these days, and there was no tricking my brain into sleeping in past about 9. Our second contingent of friends (Jen and Ben from Baltimore, who could only come up for a day trip) wasn’t due in until about 1PM, so I spent the remaining hours in that horrid waking coma feeling that you have when you just can’t fall asleep. Still, this was my only real deviation from an otherwise solid pattern over the last several months, so it didn’t hurt me too much on our return trip.

Ben and Jen arrived, as promised, almost exactly at 1, and it was right back into the city. (It may interest you to know that I paid the Lincoln Tunnel toll this time around.) I reveled in the opportunity to put on the AAl in New York Driving Show for a fresh audience, and my swearing and frantic gestures gradually carved a path somewhere in the neighborhood of Times Square. Another day of wandering was perfectly acceptable to our newly arrived compadres, so we took our time walking the thirty or so blocks to the Blue Man venue. Along the way, we browsed in the NBC store (we almost took the tour, but it was $30 a head, while watching it all on TV is still free), had authentic New York pizza (yum!) and spent not nearly enough time in a comic book store the size of my house.

As we approached the theater with time remaining, we detoured to a fairly tasteful restaurant/bar, massaged the blisters on our feet and thumbed excitedly through our indulgent purchases from the comic book store. (Well, I did, anyway.) After what the waitress described as a substandard cappuccino (like I’d even know the difference, coming from southern Maryland) and some entertaining conversation and reading, it was showtime.

I’d seen Blue Man Group about five years ago in Boston, but no one else in our group had. I hate to be lost for words twice in the same essay, but I assure you: there’s no conceivable way I can describe the experience to anyone who hasn’t been there. Maybe you’ve seen them on TV or heard their album, but it just ain’t the same — Blue Man Group is something you just have to see for yourself. It’s quite definitely one of the greatest live performances of any kind that I’ve seen — intelligent, funny and enthralling. My only real complaint was that they hadn’t changed a single thing in the show since 1997.

Nevertheless, it was the perfect capper to an incredible visit. Or would have been, had we not been involved in one final (almost inevitable) scary AAlgar travel encounter.

We had no intention of walking back to my car, so it was decided that we’d break off into groups and take cabs back. (I’m told they won’t take more than three passengers in a car.) So Jen proceeds to hail a cab, and ends up with… an unmarked black sedan of some sort. There’s a man of eastern European (I say Russian; not everyone agrees) descent driving, and a comrade of similar lineage in the passenger seat. Said comrade is holding a paper bag containing… we don’t know what.

There is no indication of any sort that this is actually a car that provides legitimate passenger service — no company logo, no protective glass barrier between the front and back seats, no meter. But Jen was already on her way into the vehicle when its driver offered all five of us a lift back to the car. “One of you can ride in trunk,” he joked. I laughed, but not because it was a funny joke.

“Where are you all from?” asked Pavel or Vlad or whatever his name was. None of us answered immediately, for (I think) obvious reasons. I was busy reaching for my cel phone in case a situation emerged. Ben was reaching for a knife for similar reasons.

“Maryland!” Jen called out, probably appalled at our poor manners. I would later find out that she was the only one of us not entertaining some ridiculously paranoid interpretation of the situation. In fact, her slight annoyance at our group exaggeration was about the only thing that made me realize just how exaggerated it was. We got overcharged a bit on the fare in the end, but that was the extent of the wrongdoing in which we were involved. And, for the record, the driver’s fellow countryman had food in that paper bag. But it could have been a gun, right? Am I right?

I guess that really just proved how impressionable and hick-like we all were in the big city —we somehow managed to turn a simple taxi scam into an encounter with the Russian mafia. Hey, the Sopranos just came back on, okay?

And speaking of the Sopranos, that’s exactly what the drive home was like — that whole little intro sequence as Tony drives out of the tunnel on to the Jersey Turnpike. Crossfade that with four additional hours of trees and unremarkable scenery, and you get a pretty good idea of what we saw along the way. Like any good getaway, it took several days to catch up on the sleep and adjust to the culture shock, but it was incredibly worth it.

I have no idea how to end this essay. Okay, see you later.

 

At the beginning of this year, it was my intention for Lauri and I to visit one major city every month throughout 2002. Unfortunately (sort of), I’ve been working a lot of overtime at my job and haven’t had the luxury of planning anything too far in advance. (Plus, I’m really lazy and antisocial — but I’ve always been both of those.) Consequently, we ended up skipping February entirely, and pretty much copping out for March, by choosing to explore the exotic distant frontier of… Washington DC. Again.

Really, though, it was kind of important to me that we return to our most frequent travel destination. We haven’t been since late last summer, despite my constant criticism of people who refuse to travel since September 11. The national mantra has become “try to get back to normal,” so it made sense to go back. Plus, I was a little curious to see how much the heightened security measures had changed the tourism experience in the nation’s capital.

So when it was confirmed that I would not be working this past weekend — a fact that can pretty much only be verified at the last minute on Friday afternoon — I decided that we should trek back to DC and have ourselves a nice healthy look around. Thursday and Friday had been unseasonably warm, so Lauri and I figured this would be a perfect day to walk around DC, soak up the sun and witness the ever-popular cherry blossoms in bloom.

A strange thing happens around this time of year in our part of the country — a phenomenon I call the Spring Tease. Every year, usually around early March or so, the temperature climbs into the seventies and the trees and flowers start showing early signs of waking up. Inevitably, every single year, I am tricked into thinking that spring has arrived permanently. I box up my long-sleeved shirts, switch the thermostat from “heat” to “air conditioning” and start considering trips to the beach. Then, predictably, Old Man Winter takes off his Groucho glasses and I end up looking like a shivering idiot standing in the snow in my shorts and flip-flops. It really must be quite funny to anyone who isn’t me.

Anyway, it wasn’t all that bad Saturday — not the perpetual southern California “sunny and 72” for which we’d been hoping, but not like the freakish July blizzards of my wife’s hometown either. Mostly it just rained or threatened to rain most of the day, which worked to our advantage in that it whittled the crowds down to only the most committed tourists.

(My god. I just realized I went on for two entire paragraphs about the weather. If my own rules applied to me, I would rightly be committing hari kari right about now. Thank goodness I’m a raving hypocrite.)

As always, we brought along our good friend Bob, who lives on the opposite end of the Metro and had agreed to meet us someplace in the middle — in this case, the Chinatown stop. Unfortunately, we ended up running about twenty minutes late, but fortunately for us, Bob showed up an additional twenty minutes after that, which afforded us the advantage of some strategic watch glances and heavy sighs. Never pass up a chance to make someone else feel bad, that’s my motto.

Our first destination was a couple of blocks away — Ford’s Theater, infamous site of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Apparently Lauri had attempted to visit this place several times over the years, but somehow never managed to make it. Personally, I’m not usually into visiting a place simply because something important happened there — there has to be something interesting there now or else the significance is lost on me. Luckily, Ford’s Theater delivered.

I thought this rendition of President Lincoln looked a lot like Grand Moff Tarkin from Star Wars.

Hidden behind the stairs way off to the left from the main entrance, in the basement of the theater, was a museum dedicated to the tragic events that took place there in April of 1865. (Add this to the list of eerie coincidences between Lincoln and JFK — the best parts of both men’s museums are hidden in the basement.) Here, we were treated to a variety of authentic props — a flag with a tear in it, from where John Wilkes Booth’s spur got caught in his frantic escape; Lincoln’s intricately embroidered Presidential overcoat; the actual theater tickets to My American Cousin (I said they looked like Confederate money, to which Lauri immediately replied, “yes, but these might still be worth something.” Ouch.).

This one definitely would make a better postage stamp than the fat, jumpsuited Vegas Lincoln.

Of particular interest was a height chart that indicated just how tall Honest Abe was (6’4”, big deal), prompting Bob to mutter, “you must be this tall to be President.” Man, I love traveling with these two.

Off in a corner were posted a few amateurish laminated sheets, which comprised the museum’s section on Abe’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. I wish I could report that I learned something from the display, but the second sentence I read contained a misplaced apostrophe and I just couldn’t bring myself to continue reading. Someone in this country has to take a stand and have a little grammatical integrity, damn it. I say that someone might as well be me.

In any event, linguistic atrocitie’s notwithstanding, the museum turned out to be pretty damned informative.

We wandered back upstairs into the actual theater portion of the theater, just in time for a short presentation on the assassination. This was, without a doubt, the most bizarre lecture I’ve ever heard — the woman giving it would wander off on strange tangents as she attempted to paint a picture of the time period. “There were no cars, of course,” she said, “no bikes, no orange cones outside.” (VERY LONG PAUSE) “The road outside was made of dirt… not asphalt or concrete… just… dirt.” (VERY LONG PAUSE) “You in the audience have come here to watch a play. Just a play.” (VERY LONG PAUSE) “You probably work in a steel mill… a tailor’s shop… a coal mine… Missouri…” (VERY LONG PAUSE)

The scene of the crime.

 

I understand my description doesn’t make much sense, but it’s as close to relaying the experience as I am capable. Suffice to say we didn’t learn a whole lot from the presentation, though it was certainly a… unique experience. As strange and uninformative as the lady was, though, I can’t bring myself to completely dislike her. This probably has something to do with the way she handled the couple with the screaming baby early in the presentation. She brought her monologue completely to a stop and just glared at them, finally saying something like “could you help us out, please?” The couple sheepishly took their screaming poop machine out of earshot, and it was all I could do not to give the woman a standing ovation. (This sort of thing doesn’t happen nearly often enough in public for my tastes.)

Once we finished our surreal little experience in Ford’s Theater, we headed across the street for lunch at a place called Lincoln’s Deli or Abe’s Pastrami or something along those lines. There, we enjoyed a surprisingly good meal for a surprisingly small amount of money. I say “surprising” mostly because the place didn’t seem particularly well-kept and our waiter did not appear to understand a word we said, nor we him. That we got what we ordered at all, and not fried squid rectum or something, was a feat in itself.

FDR once made the famous statement that if someone felt the need to build a memorial to him after he died, he wanted it no bigger than his desk in the Oval Office. That wish was honored for about half a century (seen here) until the new football field-sized FDR memorial went up on the other side of the Tidal Basin.

So, adequately fueled and driven now by a need to walk off the meal lest we all fall asleep on the table at The Great Emancipator’s Diner, we pushed onward toward the Mall. All three of us, of course, have been to the Mall many times, but never from this particular direction. It was my hope that we would pass some previously undiscovered landmark on the way, and I would not be disappointed.

Way back in 1992, Bob and I skipped school and came to DC with a few other friends. We were greatly amused to learn that the Federal Trade Commission has this playground outside its hallowed walls. Now, a decade later, it’s still there (obviously) — with upgraded equipment, but still sealed behind metal bars. (As we told our friend Lain on our first visit, “you can’t go on the slide; you’ll be shot.”)

We had all been through the Sculpture Garden several times, but none of us was aware that there was a second, equally perplexing but nevertheless cool, Sculpture Garden on the other side of the Mall. Most, if not all, of the sculptures in said garden are of the “abstract art” variety, meaning that while none of us particularly understood what was going on, we were still provided with fodder for our sarcastic remarks, and that’s what traveling is really all about — finding new things to mock. From the three-“legged” “dog” to the not-an-optical-illusion-but-still-makes-your-head-hurt house, this previously unexplored area was a treasure trove of peculiarity.

Donkey or Satan? You decide.

 

 

Don’t be fooled by our lounging — that’s Art (intentional capital A) under our asses.

 

 

Tell me this doesn’t mess with your head.

 

 

We made it to the Mall, which was thankfully unchanged since our previous visits. Nothing appeared to be less accessible than before (I had visions of the top of the Capitol dome poking out from a tangled mesh of barbed wire and machine gun nests), and people walked Frisbees and tossed dogs like they always did on a Saturday in psuedospring. It was all very comforting.

We did make a special trip to an area we hadn’t specifically sought out before — the White House. And while it was no surprise to find a portion of Pennsylvania Avenue closed off and a large fence surrounding the perimeter of #1600 (it’s been like this since early in the Clinton administration), it was still a little disappointing that we couldn’t get a good view of more than just half of one side of the most famous residence in America.

See that thing way off in the distance? They used to call that “the people’s house.”

 

(Warning: there are no jokes in this next paragraph. It’s actually kind of a downer, and you completely have my permission to skip it.) I have to admit something here — something I contemplated not including here, and didn’t even mention to my traveling companions at the time. There was a moment near the end of our afternoon in DC when we were standing on the far end of the Ellipse, the White House in front of us and the Washington Monument to our rear. An airliner, undoubtedly on its way to or from nearby National Airport, banked sharply and began heading directly for the Monument. At least, that’s what it looked like from my vantage point — a moment later it became clear to me that it was doing nothing of the sort. But during those two or three seconds, some all-too-familiar primal fear that I thought had scabbed over since September completely overrode my sense of rationality. Like most people, I watched those events unfold from a safe distance on television, so it’s hard to call my little diversion a “flashback” exactly. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a shock to my system, because I’m not usually prone to episodes like that. It made me realize just how much this thing has affected everyone, and how it’s never going to completely go away.

So we hung out in front of the White House for a few minutes until someone made the genius suggestion that we might find more entertainment someplace more entertaining than this. Getting there would, of course, entail finding a Metro station, so off we went.

Within a single block of our destination, Bob found it necessary to visit a map store to purchase a book of —get this — Metro stops. I’ve never been able to adequately explain much of what Bob does (nor he I, as I understand it), so I’m not going to even attempt to do so now. Suffice it to say that this action — inexplicable, yet completely harmless — sums up much of what I could never quantify about my closest friend.

We managed to bravely traverse the remaining hundred feet or so that lay between us and the Farragut Metro station (and with only two maps!), and it was at that point that our feet decided that they’d had about enough for the day. Besides, if I had actually told Bob what I thought about his map purchase, he probably would have pushed me in front of a moving train. Even now, as I write this, I’m anticipating the e-mail equivalent of the same thing.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we had a good day. We took the train back to our car and drove home weary but happy, which is all I’d really hoped for in the first place. For my next installment, I promise we’ll travel further than our own backyard, but it’s still comforting to know that our backyard is still there in one piece. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt just to double-check, you know?

Longtime readers of my adventures know that my travel plans rarely go very smoothly. However, it has come to my attention that there may be a new reader or two in your midst, so for their benefit, allow me to make a small statement: my travel plans rarely go very smoothly. Whether it’s misplacing plane tickets to California, driving a half-operational car halfway up the east coast from Florida, wrecking my dad’s Corvette convertible on the way home from New Jersey or just plain missing my flight out of Las Vegas, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that something — usually some unique disaster I’ve never before encountered — will get in my way as I attempt to move from point A to point B.

So I suppose I should not have been surprised when my planned trip for Boston displayed those all-too-familiar signs of self-induced peril at the very beginning. However, part of what allows these minor tragedies to persist is my almost inhuman ability to ignore previous experiences and approach each journey with completely untarnished optimism. (Let’s put it another way: if I were a cartoon character, chances are I’d be the one with the Acme catalog and the appetite for scrawny but speedy birds.) I can honestly say without fear of contradiction, however, that this most recent trip certainly takes the cake in terms of stupid things I have done to undermine my own enjoyment.

The trip was a Christmas gift to my wife — a chance for her to spend some time with an old friend and for the two of us to indulge in the aimless wandering that we have come to enjoy together. I bought our tickets (in what I believed to be a rare act of responsible forethought) last October, scheduling the trip around the first three-day weekend that followed Christmas: the January Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday. Only (and here’s the really stupid part) I never really confirmed when this holiday actually was. I can’t remember exactly what I did, though I can imagine I glanced hastily at a January 2002 calendar, credit card in hand, annoyed that I had already wasted 45 seconds on the whole endeavor. In my (presumed) impatience, I booked us a flight that left Baltimore on Friday, January 25 and returned on Monday, January 28.

This was not, as you probably know, the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, but the weekend that followed it. I, however, was satisfied that I’d done the right thing, and promptly stuck the tickets in a drawer until Christmas. This might not have been so bad, except for the fact that I booked the rest of our accommodations — hotel, rental car, tickets to see Blue Man Group — for the correct weekend. Those slips of paper were also stuffed into a drawer, also not to be seen again until…

…January 18, at the airport. That’s right — not only did I make a phenomenally stupid mistake in planning this trip, I also did not realize the mistake until we’d actually arrived at BWI. (Fortunately, I at least spotted the error in the parking lot, saving myself the embarrassment of getting indignant with a ticket taker in the actual terminal.) Amazingly, Lauri was really good-natured about the whole thing — possibly because now I could never bring up any of the much smaller dumb things she’s done since we’ve been together — and was just as happy going the following weekend as the one on which we both thought we were going.

So we came back home, unpacked and cancelled the incorrect reservations I’d made — to the tune of about $250 in cancellation penalties. (Reminder: I have accepted full blame for the whole fiasco, and it is for that reason that I am comfortable disclosing the dollar amount. It’s not there to make anyone feel bad, except perhaps me.) Fortunately, I guess, my job needed people to work overtime over the three-day weekend, so not only did I look like a hero for relieving a bit of the burden from my co-workers, I was able to recover the money I’d lost via the glorious concept of time-and-a-half.

I rebooked our hotel and car — Blue Man Group tickets could not be acquired only a week in advance, so that whole endeavor was a wash — and arranged to take Monday the 28th, which I had once believed to be a holiday, off. So add one vacation day to the list of expenses from this trip that hadn’t even happened yet.

Fortunately for us, Airport Arrival Take Two went a whole lot more smoothly, though the same could not be said for our scheduled flight. Slated to leave around 5:30, it did not arrive in Baltimore until nearly 8:00, owing to an unprecedented (for me, anyway) set of circumstances. Apparently, a woman on the flight before ours started giving birth, and the plane had to be diverted so that she could be gotten to a hospital. Personally, I didn’t believe it for a second. My theory is that AirTran has a stock list of excuses that they know no one will challenge, because “we have to sober the pilot up” or “we’re out of lemon-soaked paper napkins” (apologies to Douglas Adams) just don’t cut it. I do know this: if the excuse was true, then it just confirms my theory that everyone on this planet is here for the singular purpose of getting in my way. This child, barely minutes old when I learned of his existence, is already doing a phenomenal job of it. Well played, baby obstacle. You are indeed a worthy adversary.

We made it into Boston’s Logan airport around 9PM, met up with our baggage and proceeded to the rental car agency to pick up our vehicle. I had found, for reasons beyond my comprehension, a near-luxury car for a rate that was actually lower than that of a compact. I was, therefore, understandably excited to pick the vehicle up — after all, nothing adds to the comfortable unfamiliarity of a vacation than a strange vehicle nicer than the one you drive from day to day. It was not to be, however: the rental agency in question (Hertz, if you must know) didn’t like my credit card.

My credit card, you see, isn’t actually a credit card — it’s one of those nifty check cards you see advertised on TV by trustworthy people like Bob Dole. While this card has served me well in the stead of a typical Visa, saving me outrageous interest rates and allowing me only to spend money that I already have, it is apparently not accepted by Hertz rent-a-car. It’s something to do with liability, they say — if you only have enough in the bank to cover the rental fee, they have no way of recovering the loss if you decided to run off with the car. (Never mind the fact that the credit limit I’d be given for a normal credit card would be significantly less than the amount I actually have in the bank at this time.) Whatever their reasoning, I certainly had never heard of such a crazy thing before, and it caught me completely unaware.

Okay, that’s not true. My mother actually expressly told me this would happen, when I first cut up my regular credit card and opted for the check card. But if you’ve been paying any kind of attention to this story, you’d realize that I don’t pay any attention to such concerns of so-called “practicality,” preferring instead to throw caution to the wind and risk not having a rental car.

The clerk was certainly nice enough about the whole thing, though, and made a few phone calls to locate a rental agency that would accommodate my apparently mutant payment preference. He found us one, and after finding a few more excuses to make him say “car” in that distinctively New England manner, we bid him a fond farewell and set out for Alamo.

I’m not sure how many of you in the reading audience are completely insane, so it’s hard to judge how many of you have ever attempted cutting across airport roads and parking lots in the dark. Trust me when I say that our first real look at Boston was not a pleasant one, and the fleet of variously-accented taxi drivers honking and yelling that we were going the wrong way wasn’t helping much. They ended up being right, but I don’t think I was too far out on a limb for being skeptical of their advice. When you’re in a strange city and a cab driver tells you that he knows the only way to get you where you want to go… well, I don’t think any court in the world would convict me for doubting them.

As fascinating as all of this parking lot stuff is, allow me to speed things up a little. We got a car (much smaller and less powerful than the one I’d originally reserved, costing me more than twice as much), drove in circles for a bit (this is something I always do when arriving in a new city; it helps me get acquainted with my surroundings) and eventually collapsed into our hotel beds sometime around midnight.

In the morning, we met up with Alison (Lauri’s friend) and Rich (her boyfriend, whose name I never quite seemed to remember, though I think I covered for it pretty well in their presence). They took us to a little town square not far from where we were staying, where we gawked like tourists at the little shops and old buildings. It was at this time that I made a promise not to use the word “quaint” for the remainder of the trip, for fear of becoming annoyingly repetitive. Definitely a smart move on my part.

We had breakfast at a little diner-type place, and discussed our plans for the day. This being Lauri’s trip — not to mention the fact that every part that had been planned by me had been an unqualified disaster — we allowed her alone to decide how the four of us would be spending our Saturday. She opted, entirely unprompted by me, for the JFK museum. That’s my girl.

The JFK museum (which may have a more official name, but I don’t have that information in front of me as I write this) is located on a beautiful spot on the water, near some colleges and qua… er… cozy little towns. Granted, this probably describes about 85% of the attractions in and near Boston, but cut me a little slack — I’m from out of town. One thing that has always astounded me about Boston is how remarkably well they use their water. Of all the cities I’ve been to that involve a river or bay — Baltimore and Pittsburgh leap immediately to mind — none quite understand how to enhance its beauty quite like Boston. But I’ll save that sort of thing for the “general fawning” section I have reserved for later. For now, there’s the JFK museum.

Our initial pass through was surprisingly sparse — a gift shop, a café and a couple of small attractions. One was of the “photos on the wall with captions” school of design, of which I’ve never been much of a fan. The other was a substantial chunk devoted entirely to Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline. More precisely, it was devoted entirely to her dresses, the wearing of which apparently satisfied her entire job description as First Lady. Oh, there were a few other things, like murals depicting the seating charts at various official functions and video screens showing that incredibly stilted White House tour she gave on TV, but the dresses were pretty much it. None of us was all that impressed with the whole display, honestly. I tried my best to empathize and think of who actually would enjoy it, but the only thing I kept coming back to was “gay men.” As progressive as Massachusetts might be, somehow I doubt they’d devote an entire section of a presidential museum to a small, somewhat controversial segment of the population.

We were prepared to leave the museum in disappointment when someone — Rich, I think — figured out that the real museum was actually downstairs from where we were. Getting there involved a trip through the movie theater, which, to my dismay, was not showing Oliver Stone’s JFK. Fortunately, what lie on the bottom level of the museum was nearly as entertaining.

This was where they hid all the good stuff — lots of authentic props (various gifts from world leaders that probably resided in the Kennedy junk drawer before finding a home here; a note card with “ich bin ein Berliner” written phonetically) and recreations (Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s office) and the one thing I can never get enough of: Nixon. I don’t think anyone caught me mouthing the words to one of the infamous Kennedy-Nixon debates, and that’s probably for the best. After all, it wouldn’t help us to have a good time if three people were recoiling in horror from the fourth.

After the JFK museum, we decided to hop on “the T” (Boston’s subway) and explore the actual city a bit. We passed through an area called “Haymarket,” a series of street vendors which Alison described as “very crowded, filled with people who don’t speak much English, smelling very much of fish and old vegetables.” “Oh boy!,” I didn’t say, “Where do I sign up?” This was Lauri’s trip, remember? I was trying to be good.

 

 

A sampling of rent rates in Boston, featuring my personal favorite, “2 bedroom, 1.5 bath apartment, $2300/month.”

On the other side of Haymarket was an area that may or may not be called “Little Italy,” but you’ll probably know what I’m talking about if I call it that. It was the usual qua… uh, charming New England setup: cobblestones and little shops and the like, only it had the added advantage of smelling like garlic and baked cheese and espresso and the hundred other incredible smells that emanate from Italian kitchens. If you can’t tell, I’m already very much sold on this area of the country, so the added sensory input only makes me want to quit my job and move up there that much more.

 

Incredible high-tech public bathroom in Boston — proof that this city can do no wrong.

We walked around for a bit, bought tickets for a comedy show later in the evening, then had the most incredible dinner at (surprise) an Italian restaurant. This was unquestionably the best ziti I’d ever had, and the portion I was unable to take with me (we didn’t have a microwave in our room, and I didn’t want to take something this dense through airport security for fear of it being mistaken for nuclear material) was large enough to feed… I can’t think of a good metaphor, primarily because I can’t fathom handing over such an incredible meal to anyone else. So let’s say it was enough to feed me for about a week, and that’s figuring in me learning to eat ziti for breakfast.

Having filled ourselves with so much pasta that we all risked slipping into comas, we felt that the next logical step would be to sit down and appreciate performance art of some kind. Fortunately for me, the show (and possibly the espresso) was enough to wake me up, and we really enjoyed ourselves. The place in question was called the Improv Asylum (I was trying really hard not to mention the horrible name), and they put on a hell of an act. Think Whose Line Is It Anyway? with a slightly larger cast and a small selection of prepared material. I’m a pretty lenient judge when it comes to comedy anyway — make me laugh and you get a good review — but this group was definitely worth the trip. We rounded out the evening with a movie at Alison’s, and were back in our hotel room by about midnight.

Our rental car agreement was really hazy on the issue of mileage, but we had a specific destination in mind on Sunday and decided to throw caution to the wind. (Don’t be surprised if the phrase “throw caution to the wind” coming from me makes you nervous. You weren’t even there. Imagine how Lauri felt.) After purchasing a map (which was, surprise, not much help), we set out for Salem, infamous home of witchery and cheesy tourist attractions.

I have to say that, while Salem was certainly not filled to the brim with tasteful displays of historical accuracy, it wasn’t exactly the homogenized Disneyesque affair I expected it to be. Sure, there was the corny wax museum (which again hid the best stuff downstairs, presumably in accordance with Massachusetts museum law) and the dreadful gift shop (though I did notice a Jar-Jar Binks mask among the Satanic relics), but the atmosphere was no different than in any of the surrounding townships. There just happened to be a little more history here.

 

 

If this were at all legible, you’d see that it says “Cuftom House.” Those crazy aff puritanf.

The museums and such were scattered about an otherwise unremarkable small town, complete with (wait for it) cobblestones and little shops. I wish I could adequately express the incredibly positive feelings that this setup gives me, but apart from using the phrase “cobblestones and little shops” over and over, I’m finding it very difficult. There’s an unquantifiable atmosphere that’s carried throughout every part of this region I’ve visited — there’s a history here, but it’s more than that. The people just seem somehow smarter. More civilized, in an entirely humble sort of way.

Here’s a good example of what I mean: near the end of our trip, Lauri and I realized that we saw few, if any, fast food restaurants in our travels. We didn’t particularly miss them at all — they just weren’t anywhere to be found. There also seem to be quite a lot more book stores than you find in other parts of the country, and the people you meet seem to be genuinely interested in purchasing and (get this) reading books. NASCAR, as you might suspect, doesn’t appear to be very big in New England.

Part of this, we think, is the presence of so many major colleges and universities in the area. The end result is something like an enormous college town — rowdy at times, but usually quiet and thoughtful, with lots of entertainment for people with brains in their heads. Having spent most of my life in southern Maryland, the culture shock is really quite startling.

 

 

My wife adapts to the local customs…

…and ends up on trial! (Okay, not really… but Salem is full of wacky photo ops like this one.)

Anyway, Salem. We spent most of our Sunday here, between the shops and the witch-related attractions, and we were both very obviously enjoying ourselves immensely. The wax museum left a bit to be desired — the figures didn’t look very real, and they apparently ran out of attractions near the end and threw up a hammock and a display on “how to make a wax figure” — but Lauri seemed to quite enjoy it. And don’t think that I didn’t, just because I thought it was cheesy. I’ve been to Las Vegas twice, remember.

 

 

Images like this one make Salem’s wax museum fun for the whole family!

An authentic recreation of a 17th century prison from the outside…

 

…and the inside, apparently.

The Salem witchcraft museum was a little skimpy on attractions toward the end, as evidenced by this giant Colorforms-style setup involving three moving pieces that each belong only one logical place in the picture.

Our stomachs eventually led us to O’Neill’s Irish pub, one of the many — crap, I’ll just say it — quaint little taverns that dot the area. We’re not much into the bar scene around where we live, mostly because the bar scene here involves loud country music and louder men picking fights with one another, but I could easily see myself slipping into comfortable alcoholism if I had easy access to a place like this. Sure, there was the occasional yelling from the avid football fans at the bar, but they only yelled when there was a score — not at every disagreeable call the refs made. Besides, the New England Patriots won a spot in the Super Bowl that afternoon — it’s hard to fault anyone for getting excited about something like that, especially since I associate myself with Washington, DC. We won’t even go into the football situation there.

Not much more of note happened after O’Neill’s. We returned to our room and rested off a day of walking, and pretty much ran out the clock till our uneventful flight home the next day.

For nearly two years, I dated a girl who lived in Boston. Things got pretty serious for awhile there, in fact. When I came home after a weekend visit with her, the resulting sadness was attributed to my missing my girlfriend, and I have no doubt that that’s what I felt. But there was another feeling there — a feeling that was obscured by my more obvious emotions. I missed Boston. Outside of DC — hell, at times even more than DC — no other place makes me feel like people like me belong there. I wouldn’t feel like a freak for taking a book to the pub with me, nor would I yell at the little Irish band to stop playing so I could hear the baseball game. I’d probably waste all my money on books and shows, but I waste my money here, too. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I ended up living up there someday; at the very least, we’ll definitely be returning with friends in tow. I just really love the place that much.

Oh yeah, I think Lauri enjoyed the trip too.

I freely admit that I’m not the most responsible person in the world, but there’s still something thrilling about playing Ferris Bueller on a beautiful spring day.  Last Monday was the first of such days in our area, and I was itching to head back to DC to do some of those things that we can’t normally do on weekends.  I wanted to take some tours, for one thing – particularly of the White House and the Capitol.  And there were monuments that we’d been putting off seeing, mostly on account of the weather.  But one days’ notice was hardly enough, particularly for Lauri, who’s been consistently buried in midterms and papers for the better part of a month now.  The absolute earliest she could ditch school and come with me was a week from that day – Monday, the seventeenth.  That, I supposed, would have to be good enough.

So I put in my request for vacation time at work and I invited Bob to do the same.  While this didn’t hold quite the spontaneous spirit for which I’d hoped, it was still exciting to know that I’d be taking an extended weekend just for the sake of having a good time.  Little did I realize that my infamous tendency for making lousy plans would become a key factor in our day.  For starters, it was Easter Monday.  Not being up on what the religious folk are doing nowadays, I never realized that this was a holiday.  But, much to our dismay, the city was packed – possibly even more so than on a typical weekend – with teenagers and other pesky tourist types.  On top of that, the area had apparently reconsidered its brief experimentation with warm spring weather and decided to make it about 45 degrees and drizzly all day.  This is what I get for patiently waiting to take a legitimate day off, rather than just bailing from work and worrying about the consequences later.

But before we even got to deal with the smattering of raindrops and flood of pubescent wanderers, we had to deal with Bob.  Or, more precisely, we had to find Bob.  Okay, that’s not entirely what I mean either – I had a pretty good idea of where Bob was, but I had no way of reaching him.  Our longtime travel companion has, in Lauri’s words, become so technologically advanced that he’s actually moving backwards.  Here’s a guy who had a Personal Data Assistant long before they became the hip accessory to have, a guy who can make 3-D virtual tours of any physical space and then burn them to a DVD – but he has no phone at his home, nor does his usual e-mail address work at the moment.  Fortunately, he does have a cable modem, and only through sheer dumb luck did I think to leave an “away” message with all the pertinent information on AOL Instant Messenger Sunday night before I went to bed.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the “pertinent information” hadn’t been thought out as well as it probably could have been.  I’d asked Bob to meet us on the Mall side of the Capitol, by the Reflecting Pool – a location I would soon learn was the absolute farthest point from the nearest Metro station that could still be accurately described as “near the Capitol.”  The walk from Union Station really wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been raining and cold, a fact Lauri felt it relevant to remind me of approximately every eight seconds.  (I suppose I deserve this, as it is typically my responsibility to complain and hers to listen.)

DC’s renowned cherry blossoms, fully in bloom only days before, had since melted into a paste thanks to a steady bout of April precipitation, but we were still stricken with how pretty the area is that surrounds the headquarters of the legislative branch of our federal government.  Quaint little cobblestone paths led the way, diverting occasionally to a patch of grass or collection of flowers.  If ever a bourgeois revolution does occur, I cringe to think what will happen when the angry mob seizes DC’s landscaping bill.  But for now, it seems like money well spent.  They’ve even managed to somehow breed a special strain of tree that includes a little identification plaque – “The Larch,” for instance.  Which, I imagine, is useful if you actually give a rodent’s hindquarters about trees, or if you’re a Monty Python fan and get a kick out of imagining each tree’s name being recited carefully by John Cleese.  But I digress.

We (eventually) made it to the reflecting pool, only to discover that Bob was nowhere to be found.  We were about twenty minutes late, and I can’t say if I would personally have waited as long in the rain if our positions were reversed, but I doubt I would have gone all the way home, either.  Nevertheless, I felt obligated to at least circle around the pool at least once, just in case he was crouching somewhere unseen, maybe behind one of those kindergarten crayon drawings posted on the artificial wall to our right.  I didn’t see Bob, but I did see the infamous Congressional Goldfish that he and I had encountered once before.

The Congressional Goldfish are, as you might imagine, goldfish that live in the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol.  In or around 1992, Bob and I made a trip to DC with a video camera, trying to come up with some silly footage surrounding my make-believe run for President.  (Just another example of how little some things change, I suppose.)  Amid our wanderings, we discovered a number of tiny orange fish swimming about in the pool, and with the irrefutable logic of two smartasses, reasoned that, as taxpayers, we had a right to capture one or more of these fish if we so desired.  The Capitol policeman had other ideas.

We didn’t get into any trouble, really – he just asked us to please refrain from catching the fish and to please return the ones we had refrained from refraining from catching back into the pool.  He was nice, and he carried a gun, so we did what he said.  But every time I return to the reflecting pool, I can’t help thinking of the One That Got Away.  End of pointless reminiscing.

We completed our circle, Bobless, and decided, much to our collective chagrin, to proceed without him.  As we climbed the Capitol steps, it occurred to me that the reason why people nowadays are so relatively out of shape might be because they don’t build structures with ten thousand steps leading to them.  It was barely half an hour into our stay and already our legs were refusing to cooperate with us.  I imagine they liked it even less when, upon reaching the top, we discovered that we were on the wrong side of the building for a tour and made them haul us all the way back down again.

So there we stood, essentially back where we’d started.  The annoying drizzle had faded into a somewhat equally annoying mist which didn’t exactly soak us but wasn’t exactly comfy either.  As we caught our breath and attempted to sweet-talk our legs (we knew we’d need them on our side for what we’d planned for the rest of the day), a typical stroke of Pure Dumb Luck occurred.  From atop those accursed steps moved a familiar green fedora, flanked by frantically waving arms.  Somehow, impossibly, Bob had found us.  I couldn’t see what gestures, exactly, he was making, but I figured if I stood there long enough, he’d figure out that I wanted him to come to us rather than vice-versa.  He’s smart like that.

Now, at least, our little travel group was complete.  We were wet, we were cold, and two of us needed to find a bathroom.  It was more than an hour later than my anticipated starting time – Bob had actually just arrived, the usually dependable DC mass transit system suffering a rare breakdown – and we hadn’t even begun to see anything.  My brain attempted to take stock of the situation and plot the best course of action, but it was quickly overridden by my bladder.  So off we went, in search of a public restroom.

Our brief detour took us past the Supreme Court, where we saw the exact same lone anti-abortion protestor that had been there several months before.  “If you kill a baby,” he yelled to each passerby, “you will burn in the far!”  (Hailing, as we do, from Southern Maryland, both Bob and I knew that he meant “fire.”  I suspect this is something everyone else would be able to pick up if they were even listening to the guy.)  Lauri was convinced that he was saying this specifically to her, but I tried to convince her not to take it personally – he probably says that to all the girls.  “Thanks,” I muttered in return as we continued walking.  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

We ended up at one of the many satellite buildings of the Library of Congress.  We passed through a security checkpoint more elaborate than that of any airport I’ve ever been in, and into a lobby that didn’t particularly lead anywhere.  It turns out that the Library of Congress – or at least this branch – wasn’t a tourist attraction like, say, the National Archives.  It was a library in the truest sense of the word, and without any specific title in mind, you wouldn’t have much fun there.

But we weren’t there to have fun – we were there to pee.  Fortunately, the LOC does have public restrooms, which I can proudly rate with four (out of a possible five) stars.  No overwhelming odor, toilets that flush, a hand drying machine.  Kudos to the architects of these fine lavatories.

Upon completing our urinary mission, we wandered the immediate vicinity for potentially interesting things to see.  We ended up in the gift shop, which turned out to be more or less an exact duplicate of every other gift shop in downtown DC – the obligatory reproductions of famous historical documents and city maps, and a liberal helping of completely random items.  In this particular case, the random items were along the “woven rug” motif, which included woven mousepads, hangable mini-tapestries and tiny rugs apparently manufactured for Barbie and her friends.  None of us could offer an explanation why the Library of Congress should have such things in their gift shop, but as always, we spent a good fifteen minutes or more browsing the books and posters.  And, as I tend to do when I have a few dollars in my pocket, I ended up buying some stuff.  We really just can’t take me anywhere.

By this time, we still hadn’t seen very much and it was almost noon.  Having already heeded messages from both our legs and our bladders, we decided to give our stomachs a vote and break for lunch.  We’d nearly worked out way back to Union Station anyway, so the thinking was that, after a meal, we could just completely restart our day from our point of origin and tackle the city anew.  Actually, the thinking wasn’t nearly so clear – it was probably closer to “me hungry, me need food now.”  But that doesn’t make nearly as interesting a story.

After a fairly quick lunch, we headed back toward the Capitol.  The rain had completely stopped by now, but the sun steadfastly refused to show itself.  Nevertheless, the three of us were now in pretty good spirits as we walked, and began taking up our favorite tourist activity – heckling everything in sight.  On the back steps of the Capitol, for instance, was a life-size mannequin of Jesus, next to a huge cross made of flowers.  (I guess all that talk about “seperation of church and state” is just that – talk.)  We got a few pictures, had a few laughs, then decided that maybe our tour guide could tell us if our tax dollars were actually being used to pay for this not-exactly-non-denominational display.  But it turned out that the line for tours equated to about a two and a half-hour wait, so we ruled that out.

 

Approaching the Capitol.

Church and state, schmurch and schmate.

Bob and Jesus.

Anyway, we’d seen protesters on our way in, and it’s always been our dream to heckle some protesters.  In keeping with the spirit of the day, however, the assembly was just over, and its patrons had mostly dispersed by the time we’d arrived.  And on top of that, they were protesting for lower income taxes, a cause against which none of us could probably have found a convincing argument.  What a day this was turning into.

Remnants of the missed protest.

Fortunately, we’d allowed for a number of contingencies, and had consequently filled our plate with more than we ever could have hoped to see in a single day.  So we headed to the next place on our list – the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  Aside from being probably a pretty interesting tour, I’d planned to use a great joke on whomever had the good fortune of being our guide.  It was a joke that probably none of them had ever heard before, and would, I suspected, provide them with much amusement for weeks to come.  That comic gem was this: “Can I have some free money?”

But alas, it was not to be.  By the time we arrived, the Bureau had sold out of tour tickets for the day – which really shouldn’t have come as any surprise to us by now.  As if to rub salt in the wound, a banner on the outside of the building proudly announced “we’ll show you the money!”  Not only did I not get a chance to deliver my horrible joke, but the bastards actually managed to get one horrible joke up on me, without even making personal contact with me!  What nerve!

Sorry, kids… maybe Canada will let you come gawk at their money.

As we were fairly close to the Washington Monument, we steered ourselves in that direction, determined to see something in this damned city before dark.  Surprise – it ended up being closed altogether.  It’s probably just as well, though.  I seem to remember having been inside DC’s famous giant phallic symbol in elementary school, and I don’t recall being especially impressed.  Okay, actually I do, but I refused to admit that to whatever outside force was keeping us from seeing anything interesting.  You know, sour grapes and all that.

We hoofed to the far side of the Monument, and I discovered a surprising fact – after probably twenty trips to DC over the last few years, I still have absolutely no clue where anything is in this city.  It’s a long running joke that I couldn’t find my way to the National Zoo if my life depended on it, but I truly believed that this one failing was the exception rather than the rule.  As we stood about fifty yards past the Monument, however, I began to realize just how geographically clueless I was.  From this point, there was a famous landmark in every direction.  The Washington Monument to my left.  The Jefferson Memorial behind me.  The Lincoln Memorial to my right.  And, directly in front of me, a fancy and somewhat familiar-looking house in which Bob and Lauri tell me the President lives.  I guess it’s true what they say about learning something new every day – except that I’ll probably forget by the next time we go up there.  Hell, I’m probably remembering it incorrectly already.

Approaching the city’s most famous giant phallic symbol.

Lauri and Bob in front of the giant phallic symbol.

AAl and Bob in front of same.

The weather had almost begun to cooperate by now (it wasn’t sunny, but it wasn’t cold or rainy either), so we decided that we might as well try to at least see some of the more outdoorsy attractions while we were so relatively close to them.  After all, they couldn’t exactly close slabs of marble and stone now, could they?

Well, almost.  The Lincoln Memorial wasn’t exactly closed, but there were signs indicating that it was under massive restoration.  Fortunately, this didn’t mean covering up The Great Emancipator with a huge condom as they had done with the Washington Monument a couple of years ago – just stuff that was largely invisible to us.

In front of the Lincoln Memorial — becoming a familiar sight.

The Lincoln Memorial was pretty much as it looks on TV and in movies, which is to say, fairly impressive and inspiring.  It’s not that I was bored by it by any means – it’s just hard to describe it beyond what you’ve probably already seen.  It’s a giant statue of our sixteenth President, sitting in a thoughtful pose and gazing out over the city, flanked by marble walls bearing inscriptions of some of his better speeches.  My only real complaint was that the speeches could have used a little more punctuation – particularly commas – but I wasn’t about to reach for my red pen with so many witnesses around.  Maybe I’ll come back late one night with a hammer and a chisel and make things right.

The Great Emancipator and the Great Procrastinator.

From there, we moved toward the Jefferson Memorial, which was not-so-conveniently located on the far side of the Tidal Basin.  By my calculations, the Tidal Basin is roughly a hundred thousand light-years side to side, and even longer if you’re walking around the outer perimeter of it.  Still, we had nothing better to do, and we were determined to see some interesting stuff after that long string of disappointments.  So we rallied our legs, which were still fairly bitter from all the stair climbing that morning, and pressed on.

Fortunately, there were a few distractions along the way.  Before we even made it to the shore of the Basin, we came upon the Korean War Memorial.  The History Channel is always calling Korea the “forgotten war,” (which is strange, because only a few channels down, fx is showing M*A*S*H* pretty much non-stop), so I felt somewhat guilted into stopping and looking around.

The Korean War Memorial.

Really, I don’t mean for that to sound as tasteless and uncaring as it does.  I am genuinely interested in nearly all of this nation’s history, and I do have a great respect for those that have served and fallen in combat.  But without a personal connection – like the one I feel for World War II, since at least two of my four grandfathers (it’s a long story) served – it’s largely abstract to me.  Still, the Korean Memorial did an excellent job of paying tribute to the veterans of that war.  Of particular interest was a wall, similar to the more famous one used to memorialize Vietnam, strewn with ghostly faded images from the period.  It was a haunting and completely appropriate touch, as far as I was concerned.

Very cool plaque at the Korean War Memorial.

Continuing our route Jeffersonward, we cut across the lawn adjacent to the Korean Memorial and took what looked like a well-worn shortcut to the path around the Tidal Basin.  We passed a small memorial of local interest – a typical dome-and-pillar construction erected to remember veterans from the DC area.  Again, without any personal connection (and each of us did check the inscriptions for potential relatives), it was hard to really appreciate it, but it was worth stopping and taking a look at.  Still, we were on a mission, and barring a sudden meteorological disaster, we were determined to make it to Tommy Boy on the far side of the Basin.

About halfway around, we discovered the newly-constructed Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, another much-needed distraction along our incredibly vast pilgrimage.  I’d like to say I was surprised to discover it there, but given the recent discovery of my spatial ineptitude, I wouldn’t have been particularly surprised to find the Zoo there.  Except, you know, that I can never find the Zoo.

The FDR Memorial, I am pleased to say, made the whole day of walking and disappointments worthwhile.  It’s an enormous maze of polished stone walls and waterfalls, split into sections that correspond to this incredible man’s four terms in office.  When he was alive, Roosevelt asked that no memorial built in his honor be larger than his desk.  Unless his desk was the size of a football field, the architects of this staggering piece of work set his wishes aside.  And I, for one, am glad they did.

Really, the memorial doesn’t just serve to mark the existence of FDR himself, but also the state of the nation during his time in office – probably the most significantly eventful time in our recent history.  Sections devoted to the Depression, World War II and other important Roosevelt-era milestones stand as a testament to the tremendous hurdles he helped that generation overcome.  To give you some idea of how important Roosevelt was, consider this: my grandmother liked him.  My grandmother hates everyone.  That she has kind words for this man is a true testament to his power and charisma.  This staggering memorial – my new favorite – is a close second.

My travelling companions, I believe, were equally impressed.  Bob wandered with a look that he usually reserves for great movies, occasionally joining me as I stared at one of FDR’s more inspiring speeches and muttering something like “I wonder what font that is.”  Now you know why I insist on bringing him along.

The only bad part of exploring this outdoor exhibit was the ever-present swarm of teenagers, and the lewd things they insisted on doing around the various statues (trust me, you don’t want to know).  Perhaps because of this, I felt it necessary to make my presence known before anyone over the age of sixty.  “Look!,” I wanted to shout.  “We’re young!  And we’re interested!  So shut the hell up about how our generation doesn’t care about anything!”  But I didn’t shout.  Because I also wanted them to know that we’re respectfully interested.  I suspect they didn’t even notice.  Decrepit bastards.

Parting shot of the Washington Monument from a bridge on the Tidal Basin.

After approximately fourteen miles further around the Basin, we finally made it to the Promised Land – the Jefferson Memorial.  By this point, the three of us were hardly in a state to truly appreciate it.  Our legs were worn to nubs, the temperature had taken a serious dip and we were overwhelmed by the vastly more spacious FDR Memorial.  We enjoyed Jefferson with whatever peripheral enjoyment we could muster, but I suspect I would have gotten more from it under different circumstances.  Jefferson, after all, was a truly great man – author of the Declaration of Independence, revolutionary thinker (pun not entirely intended), inventor, statesman – he did it all.  And, unlike those of us who attempt a variety of things just to brag that we have, he did it all remarkably well.

And, partially out of guilt and partially out of genuine interest, we visited the fairly generic Jefferson Memorial gift shop, which looked astonishingly similar to the gift shop at the Library of Congress.  There, I bought a somewhat overpriced book and conferred with my co-travelers on the subject of departing for home.  The motion was passed, three to zero, so we headed for the Metro station and said our goodbyes.

All in all, despite the persistent pain in my legs (I’m finishing this up two days later, and the pain has now faded to a dull ache) and the total dissimilarity between what we’d planned and what we ended up doing, I can say with pride that a good time was had by all.  I found a new favorite spot, spent a day with my friends and more importantly, didn’t spend a day at work.  So what if nothing went as planned – it’s not as if anything involving me ever does.  And I’m starting to see that this is not an altogether bad thing.