I'm back! Safe and sound and still kickin', despite what some of the gods of fate have plotted against me...we'll get to that in a minute, but first, as promised, here's a photo documentary of my trip...
I left Lake Mary around 3:45am Monday and although I was very tired and fought all the way the urge to nod off, I caffeined up enough to make it through uneventfully. The weather was very cold and grew colder as I got further north but I arrived at the motel around 6:15pm. I was surprised how much the drive could affect me physically. I was sore and achey all over.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I planned this trip to be low budget and since hotel rates went up the closer you stayed to the city itself, I chose to book a room in Fredericksburg, Virgina, some 50 miles south of Washington.
Fredericksburg is well-known for it's history, having been an important location during the lifetime of George Washington who's family lived across the river and in the Civil War it was the site of a major battle, being a strategic city halfway between the capital cities of the opposing sides (The USA's Washington and the CSA's Richmond)
Here are some early morning shots of Fredericksburg as I walked from the parking lot to the train station.
I didn't take pics of the train but I should have. These commuter rail cars, run by the Virginia Rail Expressway are slick, clean and double-deckered. As the train passed some of the area highways jammed with cars, I could see I had the right idea.
Once at Union Station I walked around a bit and took some pics. Nicely decorated for the season, I admired the beautiful architecture of this gigantic train station I hadn't seen in 17 years. Looks very much the same. Well, classics are just that aren't they.
They had this model train scene set up in one of the wings I thought was cute.
I noticed they are getting prepped for the upcoming inauguration. It was still early (only 8:45am) so this store was not yet open but as you can see, it's ready to sell all sorts of memorabilia to the throngs of visitors who'll descend on this city in a month or so. Though it would have been nice to witness history, I'm glad I visited before the mayhem since, in my opinion, just based on the hustle and bustle of the morning commute, this city is too crowded now! Can you imagine in January?
I walked over to the Capitol and though the grade of Capitol Hill from Union Station is rather slight and the distance is only about half a mile I was sweating and breathing heavy when I got to the Visitor's Center. This trip really informed me as to my physical inadequacies and just how much I have let myself go. I really need to do something about that.
The entrance is east of the east side of the Capitol Building. You descend stairs or ramps to an underground entryway. The doors to this place are huge glass and bronze behemoths that must weigh a ton each. Though I have my physical limitations, I am a big man so I can throw my weight into the effort of opening a door. Well let me tell you, it was tough, I don't know how little old ladies or kids could do it. Even a staffer admitted to me it's a commonly known problem. And no automatic doors. They'll have to work on that one.
Though a weekday and still early (9:30am) I was surprised to see that there just weren't tons of visitors. Or maybe it was because of the scale of this place...it's gi-normous. All underground, but illuminated not only by lots of beautiful light fixtures but also this (in the middle photo) and a twin of it on the other side of the grand foyer...a huge skylight where you can look up and see the Capitol dome. This place was all marble, bronze and alabaster. There was a 30-minute theater presentation about the Capitol and it's place in American history...well shot and nicely narrated but I noticed it wasn't projected onto the huge screen, the screen was actually a huge (maybe 20 feet by 50 feet) LCD panel monitor. No wonder the construction of this place went way over budget!
Here's one of the more impressive statues in the Visitors Center.
From here we were given radio-receiver headsets which allowed our tour guide to navigate us through the Capitol Building proper and offer narration via his microphone without having to speak louder than a low conversational volume. Nice. I remember it could get a bit noisy years ago as the tour guides projected voices would bounce off the marble walls.
Notice a resemblance between the tour guide and Mussolini? Well I think that applies to his philosophy as well since he was constantly yelling at stragglers in other groups to catch up to their guide, and for us, he kept an ever-wary eye out to make sure we weren't gonna wander. Though 17 years ago you could do just that if you chose, you can't now. Oh and this guy kept going on and on about veterans and the sacrifices they made and the current armed forces and asked us to clap in appreciation for our troops. Oh brother! I wonder who he voted for?
Here's more from inside the glorious Capitol. Happily, no Super Mutants fighting Talon Mercs in this Capitol ;)
I walked to the American Indian Museum but it looked closed so I chose to go on to the National Air and Space Museum.
I got there just in time to hit the free planetarium show. Once in the show, I could see why it was free. All it was was a nerdy guy narrating a visual depiction of the night sky and the current position of the stars and planets in the night sky. I actually started nodding off. I mean I love astronomy but unlike residents of the light-polluted East Coast Megalopolis, I can drive a couple of miles into nearby Volusia or Lake counties and can well see the night sky with relatively no light pollution. I kinda chuckled when he mentioned that for the past 40 years or so Washington residents have not been able to see any discernable Milky Way streaming across the night sky. How sad...I live far enough from Orlando's lights to be able to see it on a clear night here. Oh those poor city folk.
Here are some shots from inside the Air and Space Museum. Sadly I was a little disappointed...not much was noticeably different from years ago. Oh sure, a bit more on computers impact on flight and new space missions but some of the exhibits were exactly the same as I saw them in '91 and they were already a bit dated then.
Here's a couple shots as I made my way across the Mall. Notice, if you look really close, you can see the scaffolding being erected on the west face of the Capitol in preparation for the Inaugural.
I had lunch at the Air and Space Museum concession (an $8 chicken sandwich and $4 soda - gasp!) and having one half of my sandwich reserved since all this walking stifled my appetite (yay!), I broke off tiny bits of bread and tossed it to this guy.
I walked through the outdoor Sculpture Garden. This is a Lichtenstein op-art sculpture. When you move, the perspective changes in ways your brain receives as abnormal so it looks as if the house is moving. It's because it's a concave surface and your brain, knowing that a 3-dimensional house should be convex from your vantage point gets weirded out. Cool effect. I tried taping it for video but it didn't show it off that well. I think it has to do with stereoscopic vision (two eyes) and depth perception.
Here's a Calder and some silver box tree thing or whatever. :)
I shot both video and a still pic of the iconic elephant in the middle of the rotunda of the Natural History Museum but both came out blurred and dark. Darn. Oh well here is sad shot of it anyway. (Along with a better one I grabbed from another blog - snick- snick!)
Again having my recent hours of play in "Fallout 3" fresh on my mind I kept wondering where the entrance to Ghoul Underworld City was.
Here's some nicer pics I took.
I love this staircase! Escher-esque.
Time was a tickin' and my body was starting to give out after an hour or so here so I took in an IMAX movie about unusual sea creatures. It was pretty good but I wished I had worn my contacts since it was 3-D and the 3-D glasses were an awkward fit on top of my regular glasses.
I wanted to go to the newly-rebuilt American History Museum and other attractions but at my pace, they'd have to wait 'till tomorrow. I was conking out already.
It was such a struggle to walk all the way back to Union Station. Being on my budget (except for that king's ransom lunch) I wasn't going to take a cab. But the hike was grueling. What had previously felt like a nice energizing exercise routine to my body in the morning had become sheer torture. My lower back was seizing up and I could hardly go a block without sitting to rest. I'm sure I garnered more than a few odd looks from passers-by noticing a fat man huffing and puffing, face beet red and sweating profusely in 50-degree weather. Not good.
By the time the train took me back to Fredericksburg it was dark and I was ready for bed. I popped some ibuprofen, ate the saved half of my lunch and washed it down with a couple Budweiser American Ales. When I woke up at 5:30am, I turned on the Weather Channel and made the decision to head home.
My whole body was still very sore and I could only limp because my feet were aching. The forecast was for rain throughout the day, making walking a soggy proposition, even though I had my umbrella with me. And though the temps would be milder than the day before, they'd drop again by the next morning, when I had originally planned to head back home. There could even be, the meteorologist warned, some ice or freezing rain. Oh no, the drive was grueling enough in clear weather, I had to go now. It was already shocking enough to look at Nugget's temperature LED readout on the dashboard early that morning as I got in her to drive the half-mile to the train station and saw it say: 32-degrees...and then it flashed: ICE POSSIBLE. Yikes.
So I checked out, got a credit for the dropped night and began my long drive home. Luckily the weather was only scattered showers through much of Virginia and by the time I reached North Carolina it was cloudy but rain-free almost the whole way down. But that's not to say the return trip was without incident...
Halfway through South Carolina I was zipping along smoothly at about 70 miles an hour when I saw what looked like a small white paper bag crumpled up into a ball ahead of me. But as I drove over it I realized that it was actually a chunk of the road about 1 foot square in mass.
The chunk cleared the front bumper but something else under the chassis of the car impacted with it and I felt and heard a huge thud beneath my seat as the asphalt bounced up. The chunk's velocity shot it out from under my car hitting my back bumper, smacking down hard onto the roadway and, as I watched in shock in my rear-view mirror, it hurtled towards the car following behind me.
The car swerved but the airborne chunk seemed to be veering towards it. I was sure it was going to smash directly into their windshield but at the last second it glanced the right side of their A-pillar, probably leaving a dent or two and then likely became a problem for the next car down the line.
I watched the impacted car and though they slowed down, they, like me just kept on going. I kept glancing in the rear-view wondering if this incident would be considered my "fault" and also worried about any possible damages to Nugget. Nugget ran along fine like nothing happened. No idiot lights flipped on warning me of unseen damage. It looked like the gas gauge was not indicating a puncture to the gas tank. Whew! But were there exterior damages? I didn't want to stop to find out. Not then.
Once I saw that the car behind me was no longer there (they had probably turned off at the next exit to survey damages) I decided to turn off and checked out my Nugget. Luckily, not a scratch. Whew, again!
But my nerves were shot. Memories of my ill-fated drive home from a similar, albeit much shorter, road trip in July haunted me. All I wanted was to get home.
Hours later as I passed the sign welcoming me to FLORIDA - The Sunshine State, I breathed a sigh of relief. Home at last.
I left Lake Mary around 3:45am Monday and although I was very tired and fought all the way the urge to nod off, I caffeined up enough to make it through uneventfully. The weather was very cold and grew colder as I got further north but I arrived at the motel around 6:15pm. I was surprised how much the drive could affect me physically. I was sore and achey all over.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I planned this trip to be low budget and since hotel rates went up the closer you stayed to the city itself, I chose to book a room in Fredericksburg, Virgina, some 50 miles south of Washington.
Fredericksburg is well-known for it's history, having been an important location during the lifetime of George Washington who's family lived across the river and in the Civil War it was the site of a major battle, being a strategic city halfway between the capital cities of the opposing sides (The USA's Washington and the CSA's Richmond)Here are some early morning shots of Fredericksburg as I walked from the parking lot to the train station.
I didn't take pics of the train but I should have. These commuter rail cars, run by the Virginia Rail Expressway are slick, clean and double-deckered. As the train passed some of the area highways jammed with cars, I could see I had the right idea.Once at Union Station I walked around a bit and took some pics. Nicely decorated for the season, I admired the beautiful architecture of this gigantic train station I hadn't seen in 17 years. Looks very much the same. Well, classics are just that aren't they.
They had this model train scene set up in one of the wings I thought was cute.
I noticed they are getting prepped for the upcoming inauguration. It was still early (only 8:45am) so this store was not yet open but as you can see, it's ready to sell all sorts of memorabilia to the throngs of visitors who'll descend on this city in a month or so. Though it would have been nice to witness history, I'm glad I visited before the mayhem since, in my opinion, just based on the hustle and bustle of the morning commute, this city is too crowded now! Can you imagine in January?
I walked over to the Capitol and though the grade of Capitol Hill from Union Station is rather slight and the distance is only about half a mile I was sweating and breathing heavy when I got to the Visitor's Center. This trip really informed me as to my physical inadequacies and just how much I have let myself go. I really need to do something about that.
The entrance is east of the east side of the Capitol Building. You descend stairs or ramps to an underground entryway. The doors to this place are huge glass and bronze behemoths that must weigh a ton each. Though I have my physical limitations, I am a big man so I can throw my weight into the effort of opening a door. Well let me tell you, it was tough, I don't know how little old ladies or kids could do it. Even a staffer admitted to me it's a commonly known problem. And no automatic doors. They'll have to work on that one.Though a weekday and still early (9:30am) I was surprised to see that there just weren't tons of visitors. Or maybe it was because of the scale of this place...it's gi-normous. All underground, but illuminated not only by lots of beautiful light fixtures but also this (in the middle photo) and a twin of it on the other side of the grand foyer...a huge skylight where you can look up and see the Capitol dome. This place was all marble, bronze and alabaster. There was a 30-minute theater presentation about the Capitol and it's place in American history...well shot and nicely narrated but I noticed it wasn't projected onto the huge screen, the screen was actually a huge (maybe 20 feet by 50 feet) LCD panel monitor. No wonder the construction of this place went way over budget!
Here's one of the more impressive statues in the Visitors Center.
From here we were given radio-receiver headsets which allowed our tour guide to navigate us through the Capitol Building proper and offer narration via his microphone without having to speak louder than a low conversational volume. Nice. I remember it could get a bit noisy years ago as the tour guides projected voices would bounce off the marble walls.
Notice a resemblance between the tour guide and Mussolini? Well I think that applies to his philosophy as well since he was constantly yelling at stragglers in other groups to catch up to their guide, and for us, he kept an ever-wary eye out to make sure we weren't gonna wander. Though 17 years ago you could do just that if you chose, you can't now. Oh and this guy kept going on and on about veterans and the sacrifices they made and the current armed forces and asked us to clap in appreciation for our troops. Oh brother! I wonder who he voted for?Here's more from inside the glorious Capitol. Happily, no Super Mutants fighting Talon Mercs in this Capitol ;)
I walked to the American Indian Museum but it looked closed so I chose to go on to the National Air and Space Museum.I got there just in time to hit the free planetarium show. Once in the show, I could see why it was free. All it was was a nerdy guy narrating a visual depiction of the night sky and the current position of the stars and planets in the night sky. I actually started nodding off. I mean I love astronomy but unlike residents of the light-polluted East Coast Megalopolis, I can drive a couple of miles into nearby Volusia or Lake counties and can well see the night sky with relatively no light pollution. I kinda chuckled when he mentioned that for the past 40 years or so Washington residents have not been able to see any discernable Milky Way streaming across the night sky. How sad...I live far enough from Orlando's lights to be able to see it on a clear night here. Oh those poor city folk.
Here are some shots from inside the Air and Space Museum. Sadly I was a little disappointed...not much was noticeably different from years ago. Oh sure, a bit more on computers impact on flight and new space missions but some of the exhibits were exactly the same as I saw them in '91 and they were already a bit dated then.
Here's a couple shots as I made my way across the Mall. Notice, if you look really close, you can see the scaffolding being erected on the west face of the Capitol in preparation for the Inaugural.
I had lunch at the Air and Space Museum concession (an $8 chicken sandwich and $4 soda - gasp!) and having one half of my sandwich reserved since all this walking stifled my appetite (yay!), I broke off tiny bits of bread and tossed it to this guy.
I walked through the outdoor Sculpture Garden. This is a Lichtenstein op-art sculpture. When you move, the perspective changes in ways your brain receives as abnormal so it looks as if the house is moving. It's because it's a concave surface and your brain, knowing that a 3-dimensional house should be convex from your vantage point gets weirded out. Cool effect. I tried taping it for video but it didn't show it off that well. I think it has to do with stereoscopic vision (two eyes) and depth perception.
Here's a Calder and some silver box tree thing or whatever. :)
I shot both video and a still pic of the iconic elephant in the middle of the rotunda of the Natural History Museum but both came out blurred and dark. Darn. Oh well here is sad shot of it anyway. (Along with a better one I grabbed from another blog - snick- snick!)
Again having my recent hours of play in "Fallout 3" fresh on my mind I kept wondering where the entrance to Ghoul Underworld City was.Here's some nicer pics I took.
I love this staircase! Escher-esque.
Time was a tickin' and my body was starting to give out after an hour or so here so I took in an IMAX movie about unusual sea creatures. It was pretty good but I wished I had worn my contacts since it was 3-D and the 3-D glasses were an awkward fit on top of my regular glasses.I wanted to go to the newly-rebuilt American History Museum and other attractions but at my pace, they'd have to wait 'till tomorrow. I was conking out already.
It was such a struggle to walk all the way back to Union Station. Being on my budget (except for that king's ransom lunch) I wasn't going to take a cab. But the hike was grueling. What had previously felt like a nice energizing exercise routine to my body in the morning had become sheer torture. My lower back was seizing up and I could hardly go a block without sitting to rest. I'm sure I garnered more than a few odd looks from passers-by noticing a fat man huffing and puffing, face beet red and sweating profusely in 50-degree weather. Not good.
By the time the train took me back to Fredericksburg it was dark and I was ready for bed. I popped some ibuprofen, ate the saved half of my lunch and washed it down with a couple Budweiser American Ales. When I woke up at 5:30am, I turned on the Weather Channel and made the decision to head home.
My whole body was still very sore and I could only limp because my feet were aching. The forecast was for rain throughout the day, making walking a soggy proposition, even though I had my umbrella with me. And though the temps would be milder than the day before, they'd drop again by the next morning, when I had originally planned to head back home. There could even be, the meteorologist warned, some ice or freezing rain. Oh no, the drive was grueling enough in clear weather, I had to go now. It was already shocking enough to look at Nugget's temperature LED readout on the dashboard early that morning as I got in her to drive the half-mile to the train station and saw it say: 32-degrees...and then it flashed: ICE POSSIBLE. Yikes.
So I checked out, got a credit for the dropped night and began my long drive home. Luckily the weather was only scattered showers through much of Virginia and by the time I reached North Carolina it was cloudy but rain-free almost the whole way down. But that's not to say the return trip was without incident...
Halfway through South Carolina I was zipping along smoothly at about 70 miles an hour when I saw what looked like a small white paper bag crumpled up into a ball ahead of me. But as I drove over it I realized that it was actually a chunk of the road about 1 foot square in mass.
The chunk cleared the front bumper but something else under the chassis of the car impacted with it and I felt and heard a huge thud beneath my seat as the asphalt bounced up. The chunk's velocity shot it out from under my car hitting my back bumper, smacking down hard onto the roadway and, as I watched in shock in my rear-view mirror, it hurtled towards the car following behind me.
The car swerved but the airborne chunk seemed to be veering towards it. I was sure it was going to smash directly into their windshield but at the last second it glanced the right side of their A-pillar, probably leaving a dent or two and then likely became a problem for the next car down the line.
I watched the impacted car and though they slowed down, they, like me just kept on going. I kept glancing in the rear-view wondering if this incident would be considered my "fault" and also worried about any possible damages to Nugget. Nugget ran along fine like nothing happened. No idiot lights flipped on warning me of unseen damage. It looked like the gas gauge was not indicating a puncture to the gas tank. Whew! But were there exterior damages? I didn't want to stop to find out. Not then.
Once I saw that the car behind me was no longer there (they had probably turned off at the next exit to survey damages) I decided to turn off and checked out my Nugget. Luckily, not a scratch. Whew, again!
But my nerves were shot. Memories of my ill-fated drive home from a similar, albeit much shorter, road trip in July haunted me. All I wanted was to get home.
Hours later as I passed the sign welcoming me to FLORIDA - The Sunshine State, I breathed a sigh of relief. Home at last.