We had a lazy start today, which I think we probably needed.  The kids were having a great time eating pancakes and playing with their new friends, and Bob and I were enjoying a comfortable bed, showers, a reliable internet connection, and friends to talk to.  (Interestingly, both friends we’ve stayed with on this trip were the ones who introduced us.  Kathleen, Colleen, and I were good friends in college, and during junior year they studied abroad in Russia on the same program as Bob.  We met when he came to visit them our senior year.)

Our announcement that it was time to go see monuments was met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, in fact.  Nevertheless, we hopped in our cars and began a caravan to the city.  Kathleen was kind enough to call us from the road and give us a guided tour of all the sites we were passing, including a lot of embassies and eventually the White House.

Downtown Washington is really beautiful, with everything pristine and perfectly manicured.  Apparently parking lots and/or garages are not sufficiently picturesque, because we discovered 

parking is a major issue.  In the midst of one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country (the Mall, the monuments, the Smithsonian, etc.), pretty much the only option seems to be on-street parking, which is limited and only lasts two hours.  Eventually we managed to find a couple of spots along the Potomac and close to the Lincoln Memorial (which Zoe later admitted to me she did find very cool, despite her earlier resistance to “monuments”).

In our second search for parking, we found a spot right in front of the Museum of Natural History, and Bob actually managed to parallel park the van very competently.  We were very proud of ourselves.  (Note: this is foreshadowing.  If this were a film ominous music would be playing here.)

When it was time to leave, we wandered back toward the car, until we eventually noticed that (1) we were now past the museum, and (2) there were no longer any cars parked on the street.  Closer inspection of the sign that we’d blown past revealed that there was no parking from 4-6:30pm.  This was not our happiest moment.  Luckily we were able to get a little humor from the situation when Bob called the number on the sign and we learned that they don’t actually tow cars to a lot, but instead just tow them to a random “nearby street” – and no, the man on the phone did not in fact know which nearby street now contained our car.  Quite a system!  Too dispirited to randomly walk the streets in search of our car, we waited half an hour until the towing company figured out where it was.

The night ended on a higher note with a nice takeout BBQ dinner at Kathleen and Daniel’s, with a special guest appearance from our good friend Ken – who, even though he’s a hip, single, TV-industry type, was enough of a sport to drive out to Bethesda and eat dinner with 6 young children so he could see us.  Ken gave me a very cool gift – a CD upon which he’d recreated a mix tape that he and I had made 20 years ago, in the summer of 1992.  Remember mix tapes?  A lost art.  He and I even snuck out for a beer after the kids were in bed.

***

From Bob:

I have many really good ideas that I often just throw out there for people to use to make their fortunes.  One I’ll throw out right now.  It’s a company that gives demographic data based on t-shirt logos seen at various high-traffic areas.  Someone must be interested in knowing which NFL franchise captures the most shirt space at Mount Rushmore or which corporate logos get the most walking billboard time in Times Square. I came up with this idea at Disney World.  It’s a good place to people watch.  Why not get paid for it?  Go ahead, knock yourselves out.

                For this trip, I have eight or so shirts and four logos among them.   Two are on the oldest pieces of clothing in my entire wardrobe, I think.  There’s the black Malerba’s Bail Bonds shirt given to me by my good friend Dee Dee Sonsini (whose grandfather played on a bocce team underwritten by said company).  The other is a maroon shirt with a big silver star on it and the words “Central Star – Central Avenue School, Naugatuck, CT.”  It was given to me by a lady who brought a bunch of kids to my office one a week for a while when I was a newspaper editor.  I helped them with their school newspaper.  Both of them prove conclusively that they made better t-shirts in the late 80s and early 90s than they do now.  They’ve gotten a lot of wear, but they don’t get many comments from people who behold them.

                The newest logo shirt in my suitcase is one that I just got for Father’s Day.  It has a stair car on it and it says, “Watch out for hop-ons!”  Some blog readers may get the reference.  A youngish park ranger in a Grand Teton visitors’ center got it.  She was the only one on the trip so far.

                The most recognized shirt I’ve got with me is shiny blue with a red stripe at the collar, and has the logo of the US Soccer Federation on it. It was given to me a few years ago, and I treasure it.  I also try to wear it on particularly patriotic occasions, such as today’s trip to the nation’s capital.  Just about every time I’ve worn it this trip, someone has commented on it.  In Custer State Park it led to a nice conversation with a high school soccer coach from Wisconsin. (I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but this guy gave me a pretty solid warning to be careful of bears in Yellowstone.  I’m just remembering it right now. He wasn’t scary bear lady or anything, but for those who have commented on my bear paranoia, this guy may have planted the seeds of my cautious approach in Wyoming.)

                Also, there was a fellow who worked at the YMCA camp who said he had a jersey from the year after the year the national team’s journey looked like mine.  He is big fan of US soccer and also a season ticket holder for the Columbus Crew of the MLS.   Later that day, there were the two ladies in Rocky Mountain National Park who noticed my shirt when we passed on the trail.  They asked me if the US women won their gold medal game.  The Columbus Crew man told me they had so I passed that along to the hikers, who were very happy.

                One surprising place where no one commented on my shirt was St. Louis, which I had always heard was a center for the sport in this country.  It might be that everyone was looking at all the other things in the City Museum and didn’t notice me. 

                Today, wearing the red, white and blue at the Smithsonian today, I was approached by a man who asked me if I knew who Sunil Gulati is.  Of course, you may also know that this is the name of the president of the US Soccer Federation.  This man sat behind Sunil Gulati in high school and says Gulati was a good forward on the soccer field despite being small in stature.  Had I known then what I know now (I just looked up Gulati on Wikipidia to get the spelling of his name), I would have commented to the Smithsonian man about the quality of the high school team Gulati played on.  I played against them several times in my own soccer career.  Guliati went to Cheshire High School in Cheshire, CT (according to Wikipedia).  Our paths did not cross on the field, however.  He is 12 years older to me (also according to Wikipedia).

                Aside from this Cheshirite Smithsonian man, we were pretty anonymous in DC.  There is a lot going on here — rangers and Park Service here and everything.  We got our own personal audio tour of Embassy Row and the environs from Kathleen, who works in DC and knows. The embassies we saw were too many to list, but some impressive ones were Togo, Indonesia, and, especially, Ivory Coast.  Many of the diplomats in side these buildings were wearing their own national team jerseys.  It was like a car ride through the World Cup. 

                I am left now only to lament that we did not return to our van a little earlier.  The tow truck driver and/or parking code enforcement officer might have mistaken me for Carlos Bocanegra and torn up the ticket.

Patriotic popsicles