Getting around

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July weekend, now for the long dog-days of summer - - hot, humid, no Survivor, mostly reruns on TV and no football til August.

My dad came to the big city for a visit last week, it went fairly well, except for a minor glitch at the airport, which I am sure will never be mentioned by my family or friends: I honestly thought the day I was supposed to pick him up was the next day (I thought Thursday was Wednesday, basically), so I went to work, thinking I had the next day to get the house taken care of and finalize the DC tour plans. So, I was at work, knocking out a project, when I got back to my desk, I had several messages from Dad, Melissa, my boss, co-workers, etc. that dad was at the airport, ready to be picked up. Not a good start . . . but, dad did get the full DC tour as we rode the metro from the airport up to the Georgia AVE metro station and a taxi cab ride through the Petworth area of DC. Little bit of excitement, but no harm done, I think.

Our overall goal was to get up to Gettysburg and tour the battlefield, which we did the next day (1 JUL 11), which was the 148th anniversary of the start of the battle. We started the tour off by watching the movie and checking out the Cyclorama of the battle in the new visitor's center. For folks that have been to Gettysburg before the new visitor's center, this is a huge improvement over the previous Cyclorama presentation, there is actual narration of the third day of the battle (Pickett's Charge) very well presented. I had seen the Cyclorama before, but not with the narration, lights and sound effects, so, good job Gettysburg National Battlefield Park.

Pop always finds the pretty, religious zealots, then tries to pawn them off on me.

Quick history lesson: Dad and I went to the Mormon museum in Omaha one time, there was a Mormon tour guide, nice young lady, dad gave her my name and address. I was visited in Fayetteville, NC for about two years by every Mormon missionary going through the city.

At Gettysburg, he did not pass out my name and address to the nice lady.

After that we did a quick walk around some of the displays in the town, there were only a few folks in period costume (I was told that the big costume days were 2 and 3 July, so we missed the real show). I was kind of disappointed by that, I really wanted to see masses of folks in costume, but that is OK. I have seen a Civil War re-enactments before at Bentonville, NC:

Link to Bentonville Wikipedia page

There were about a thousand re-enactors at Bentonville, I was expecting a lot of that at Gettysburg. I guess I will have to go again next year. . . .

We then had lunch at the Pickett's Charge Buffet, a fine example of American cuisine, if it was fried, it was in there, plus macaroni and cheese and wide variety of cakes and pies. It is actually on battlefield, and was where a lot of the actors from the movie ate lunch on a regular basis.


After lunch, we took a guided tour of the battlefield with one of the Certified Gettysburg tour guides, that is the second best way to see the battle (the best way is with one of the Army History experts who was writing a book about Gettysburg, which my organization at work did about 2 months before). The guide took us through all three days of the battlefield, he really focused in on how the terrain, logistics, leadership and communications affected the battle. According to him, if Stonewall Jackson had not been killed at Fredericksburg the month before, the battle may have been different. Definitely one of those endless/pointless arguments that I try to avoid getting into with Civil War zealots. History is as it is, no sense what-iffing it.


Devil's Den as seen from Little Round Top


A Joshua Chamberlain wannabe

The next day's highlight was a trip to the Dulles annex of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum, which both dad and I wanted to see, it was very interesting, link . . .

National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center


They had some very well preserved, historical examples of airplanes there - - the Enola Gay, a lot of early aviation examples, WWI, WWII and cold war aircraft. There is also a full sized Space Shuttle mock up there, which was cool to see because the Space Shuttle era is ending. Pretty cool museum if you are into that sort of stuff, it is free, but you have to pay 15 bucks to park there and there is about 4 dollars worth of tolls to get out there.


The Fourth of July in DC

This past week was also my first National Capital 4th of July, which was pretty cool, actually. We (the group of friends I run with) had a potluck dinner at Jford's house in the Foggy Bottom section of DC. We made enchiladas and asian chicken salad (lots of it), both turned out to be pretty good. After dinner, we all headed over to the Kennedy Center to watch the fireworks from one of the outdoor decks there, one of the secret Washington insider spots for watching fireworks. Very impressive display, and we avoided the huge crowd of folks out on the Mall.

Of Note:

I actually ran a 5k race with my running group on 2 July, the Semper Fi 5k in Anacostia Park. I ran the first 2 miles with Jford, then picked up the pace for the last mile. All running systems were a go, I ran in my Vibram 5 finger shoes (almost barefoot running) with no problems noted. I enjoyed the run, Jford, Cletus, Rob, Lee and Dirk also ran the race, Lee finished fairly well - - 2d in his age group. I won't post my time, I am currently a mere shadow of my former running self, and just happy to be able to run.