Washington, DC and "Da Boys"

We left Alexandria on Tuesday afternoon and drove to Harrisburg for an overnight stay at a Cummins dealer where the See Ya was lubed and oiled on Wednesday morning in time for us to move on to the Cherry Hill Campground in College Park, MD near Washington, DC.

Washington is the site of this years baseball weekend with "Da Boys." "Da Boys" are Jim Spivey, John Gustafson, and Duane Ross. We began our sojourns to ball games in the 1970s when John, Jim and I were all working in the same school district and Duane was selling text books.

They flew into Dulles International at noon on Friday and we headed directly for the Capitol

The Boys at the Capitol

where Jim had arranged for a tour with the office of his Congressman. The congressman's aide did a nice job of taking us through the Capitol building including a stop on the floor of the House of Representatives.

I was particularly taken with one of the quotes chiseled above one of the doors. It seems to me that our country has been getting into some trouble lately by not maintaining the separation implicit in this quote.

After our tour we hustled back to Holiday Inn where the guys were staying for dinner and then jumped on the Metro for a ride to the baseball stadium for a game between San Diego and Washington. We always enjoy visiting a new stadium even though the teams and the game were mediocre.

On Saturday we had a late breakfast at the Holiday Inn and then boarded the metro back into Washington. We headed to the Holocaust Museum

Holocaust Museum

where we spent several hours absorbing both the mood and the information of the museum. It was well worth the visit.

We had dinner on Pennsylvania Avenue and then took the metro to Union Station,

Union Station

which turned out to be an architecturally interesting building. We opted to take an hour and a half tour of the city and then headed home.

We spent too much time in traffic today. Our plan for the day was to attend the football game between the Redskins and the Arizona Cardinals at Fed Ex Stadium.

Fed Ex Stadium

Despite the fact that the crowd filled only about 75% of the stadium

Not So Full Stands

the game produced a huge traffic jam. Getting there wasn't too bad except that there was a 45-minute bus ride from the parking area to the field. That long bus ride was repeated after the game despite the fact that we waited about thirty minutes before leaving our seats. Most surprising of all was the 15 mile long backup from Fed Ex on the Beltway that resulted in my getting the boys to the airport less than an hour before their flight. Oh yeah - the Redskins won!

It was a good weekend though with lots of sports talk and political talk. Jim and I have a particularly good time because he is a reactionary and I am a radical!

Sep 28, 2008

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