Ticket to Ride

It's been a really nice day. The weather has improved daily and today was a beautiful cloudless 22 or so degrees. It's so nice to see some warm weather after a long and late northern hemisphere winter, especially since being back in Aus for a week or so and having great weather there. We walked half a dozen blocks down to the Federal Triangle, home to the dreaded IRS (the US Tax Dept) where we picked up our web-booked cycle tour. Cam rode shotgun with me on a tag-along and the girls all had their own transport. It was the perfect day for riding around the Washington Mall and visiting all the buildings and monuments. Our guide was a friendly enough bloke and we had a mixed bunch of tourists including a fellow ANZAC in town from the land of the long white cloud for a conference. Straight off a trans-Pacific flight and onto a bike, better her than me.

Cam did wine a little about the duration but for the most part the kids enjoyed cycling around the mall and stopping every couple of hundred meters or so for a quick spruke from our guide on the character of the figure described by this statue or the funny story behind that building. It was a fairly entertaining ride. Being on bikes though meant that we didn't spend much time at each monument, and there's a lot to see. We didn't get more than 200m from the Capitol and I would have liked to have had time to walk up the steps and see all 19 feet of the statue of Lincoln, another time perhaps. But there's no doubting that we couldn't have seen the sites in a better way, the kids pretty much occupied by the riding and the day designed for being out on a treadly. I shudder to think of how we might have managed had I suggested that we walk it... the ride was over 4.5 miles, that's around 7klms to you and me Rusty. Nope, walking would not have worked at all.

In the end we made our way back to the hotel and the kids were, once again, in the pool around 2pm. I worked out how to get some beer and G&T's up to the pool, a generous tip at the restaurant bar made some plastic cups appear, and we watched the kids play for a few hours. We have reservations at Ruth's Chris Steak House for dinner and plan to do it early. Tomorrow we have a 9 hour drive back to TO.

Washington is a great town, there's just so much to see and it's all pretty impressive. Walking back from our cycling we strolled passed the J. Edgar Hoover building and saw a few gents wearing FBI badges, sights from Hollywood movies abound... We saw the south side of the White House, the 'ID4 view' across the lawn. But for me the single thing that brought Washington home was sitting by the pool yesterday and seeing two Sea King helicopters fly away from the White House in different directions. When Dubya leaves town for the weekend they send 3 choppers in 3 directions, 2 decoys and only one containing the fool. I wonder whether I saw the one he was in... I couldn't sense the foolishness from that distance. DC has been great, I wish we'd had more time here but a long drive awaits tomorrow and a steak has my name on it in about an hour. Cheers.

Andy, out.