DC trip Part 4: July 4th and 5th

So after staying up all night watching the Deep Impact, my crew decides to get the very most out of the next day and be up and out by 9:30 am. This may have also been some kind of vengeful ploy because I make them get up early to do stuff.

After taking the Metro to downtown and walking past some of the famous buildings (see pics) for an hour or so, we were ready for some inside A/C action at the downtown Air and Space Museum. While the girls go off to the parade (which we've just walked through before it started), the guys and I went on to the most efficient McDonalds of all time in the museum food court. My food was at the food counter before I left the pay counter (which was after the order counter). I went from deciding what I wanted to having it in my hands in under 90 seconds. I like efficiency and instant food gratification. After lunch, we walked around for a bit and saw the cool air and space displays (hopefully the guys got some ideas for their group project), then we decided to sit for awhile and see the Space Station 3D IMAX. It was my third time (fourth, if you count the time the astronauts who filmed it showed the raw footage to JSC employees at Moody Gardens a couple years ago) to see the show, and it's pretty awesome. Then we walked around some more and my foot really really started to hurt. West to the Lincoln Memorial, which happens to be very far away from the Supreme Court building, our most eastern stop. A good few miles between those two places. But we saw it all. Add that to the Dupont Circle to Jefferson Memorial walk I did the previous evening, and my foot's about to fall off. Luckily, there are little shops everywhere that provide the magic of modern medicine in the form of precious Tylenol.

After the Lincoln Memorial walk, we were ready for some A/C again and came back to the Museum of American History (which turned out to be neater than the Natural History one), and had some cool delicious big gelato/brownie/whipped cream monstrosities. Then we walked around and learned about transportation and industrialism and Presidents and pop culture. Yes! Pop culture! They had Seinfeld's puffy shirt, Dorothy's ruby slippers, Kermit, Oscar the Grouch and a sign from Sesame Street, the Fonz's leather jacket, Mr. Roger's sweater, and more. In the Presidency section, they had more pop culture props from The West Wing and Air Force One as well as Bill Pullman's flight suit from Independence Day (I took a pic for you, Jacqui!).

That pretty much wore us out and we were ready for dinner. We left the secure zone yet again and headed into the downtowny area away from the museums and monuments. After being told (read: being lied to; there were no lines) that there was a two-hour wait at the ESPN Zone and the Hard Rock Cafe, we settled on a walk-in little diner across from Ford's Theater. It was slightly questionable, but very cheap and not that bad.

Then it was time to head into the Academy spot right under the Washington Monument to watch the fireworks. Over the course of the day, my backpack was searched no less than seven times as we went in and out of the National Mall area and museums. The last time we went into the area where we were going to watch, the security dude actually took the cap off my water bottle and sniffed it. This was odd because walking up to the checkpoint, I had just been thinking that my foot really really hurt, and it sure would be nice to be able to have a drink to numb it (I was running out of painkillers). Good thing I didn't.

Dozens of Academy folks were already at the spot (which was a perfect place). Our people had been taking shifts sitting on the area since before 8 am that morning. There were a couple of blankets down and we all watched the sunset over the National Mall. We couldn't hear the concert where the Beach Boys and Gloria Estefan were playing, but the patriotic music at the stage near us cued up as it got dark and they went through all the classics as the gorgeous and fabulous fireworks show went on.

Afterwards we participated in what was apparently the DC security folks' practice for a city evacuation. It totally felt like we were in a disaster movie as we were herded in the throng and yelled at by the officials. It was kinda cool, though, to be moving along with hundreds of thousands of people (the Metro moved over a half million that day) after such an amazing group event. Eventually we got on the right Metro line and rolled into the House before too late.

Unfortunately most of the flights left at before 7:30 am, with the earliest around 6:25 am, so our friend the tour bus that had been taking the group around the whole time we were there arrived by 4:30 am to take most of the students to the airport. Lucky Laura and I got to sleep in another couple of hours since our flights didn't leave until around 10:00 am. We had planned a complex series of transportation maneuvers that would get us to the airport without asking a GSFC person to drive us, but it was almost ruined when a fire alarm went off 30 minutes before we were supposed to leave. I wasn't finished packing and Laura was in the shower, so that was a fun little bit of waiting for the fire department to show up and let us go back inside the frat house. Eventually we did get in with a few minutes to spare, and thankfully one of the GSFC RAs drove us to the Metro station so we didn't have to drag our suitcases the 2/3 mile between the House and the station. We then took a Metro train to the end of the line in Greenbelt, which was also a bus station, so we took a bus (after running around trying to get exact change… thank you random lady who broke my $20 at the bus station!) to the airport, where we checked bags, grabbed food, got through security, and were right on time to finish breakfast before getting on our flights. [Fun foot fact: By this time my right foot had swollen to the point where closed shoes were quite uncomfortable and tight, so I switched to flip flops for the duration.]

My flight went through Cincinnati, which apparently is a wannabe Hellmouth learning from big brother Cleve-land. My connection was delayed an hour or so, thus throwing off Jessica's Insanely Complex Airport Pick-up/Drop-off Plan ®. Eventually I escaped the clammy grasp of Ohio, got back to HSV, and Omar made a third trip to the airport that day to pick me up. Since it was around 3 pm by the time I would have been ready to go to work, I stayed home, propped up my foot, and did some email stuff before passing out. After a nice nap, I woke up and did a Rap Session where we all reminisced about the last week and the good things to come.