DC, with worse pictures than ever!

This weekend my mom and I flew down to Washington DC for a family friend's bar mitzvah (sorry if that's spelled wrong, my spell check has no better suggestions!). I told my mom that I'd agreed to join her because I like the family that we were visiting, but in my heart of hearts I knew I was going for two very selfish reasons:

1. To get to run around the National Mall and see all the monuments and museums in one go.
2. To get the hell out of the cold for two days.

This post will be the usual Claire-style form of tourism, complete with horrible cell phone photography, but I'm going to go into "family time" a bit too. This is not to make you suffer, and I really hope that by the time I'm done it will have been worth your while.

Our flight was an evening flight on Friday, so I had time to come home from work, and eat some dinner before we left for the airport. We were off to a bad start when I decided to fill my shuffle with a brand-new playlist which wasn't done downloading in time, so we left the house 10 minutes late. My mom was already pissed, but I contend that that was time that we could have easily made up on the way to the airport if she would even come within 15 mph of the speed limit. When we got to the airport we found that our 9:00 flight had been delayed 3 hours: meaning that we wouldn't get into DC until 1:00, definitely wouldn't get a rental car, and might not be able to check into the hotel. I saw my mom drop her hands, thrust her jaw forward, and rock back on her heels, which means that she's about to give up, but not without throwing a temper tantrum and making life miserable for everyone around her. Luckily we got to talk to a competent airline representative who offered, "Would you like to take a US Air flight into Reagan instead?" (We were supposed to fly into Dulles) before my mom could blame her for everything bad that had ever happened in her life. Mom blew a puff of breath into her bangs, which is what she does when she gets her way but wants to show that she's not happy she had to fight for it and said, "Yeah, that's fine". We were quickly instructed on how to get to the other terminal for the 8 o'clock DC flight, blah, blah, blah and then I looked down at my watch. It was 7:20. Shit! "Are we going to have time to make it?" I asked, trying not to let the tone of my voice belie to my mom that she had just cause to continue with her aborted temper tantrum. "Oh yeah, you'll be fine," said the airline representative, who I'm sure had learned that this is always the correct answer, whether it's true or not.

Now, let me explain something to you. My mom is overweight and has been ever since I can remember. I think that's why my brother and I have always had a kind of weird relationship with food. In my head all of her shortcomings are related to her weight problem, not the least of which are mobility issues. My mom is the slowest walker in the whole entire world, I'd always accepted this as an annoying fact to be disdained, but put up with; annoying but harmless things like her annoying habit of smiling at strangers and her obsession with Home and Garden Television. I chucked her boarding pass at her and took off towards the other terminal, telling her I'd make sure they knew she was coming. I kept slowing down to look at signs, and when I got to the terminal I stopped to look at my ticket to find out the gate number before I went through security and realized that we still had to check in with US Air! I stopped in my tracks to wait for Mom and was surprised at how quickly she caught up with me. I vowed to remember this tortes-and-the-hare-like lesson the next time I wanted to slow down in a race to gather my strength. No sooner had she caught up when I whisked her back down the terminal towards the check-in desk. It wasn't till we got there (me first, then her half a minute later), that I realized that she was in tough shape. She was bright red, sweating, and she had an awful wheeze in her breath that I'd never heard in her before. I knew that sound, she sounded like an asthmatic runner 2 seconds after a sprint finish, or a cyclist about to get off and walk his bike up a hill. "Are you alright?" I asked, and didn't dash off to security until she shot an angry, "Yeah!" at me, like this was all my fault. Of course they had to give BOTH of us the full security scan (only made longer because we didn't have time to check our bags). Had I not been with my mom I would have enjoyed the fact that my frisker was obviously hitting on me. When they finished with me I pulled my suitcase off the table and all my stuff fell on the floor, underwear and all. My frisky frisker hadn't zipped my suitcase. I cursed, threw it all back in and fled from my mom who was still standing unattended in the strip-search coral before she killed someone. As my girlfriend chased me down to return the watch I'd left behind, it turns out that the other security guards were surrounding my mom trying to make sure she was alright. "Are you sure you're alright, ma'am? You're really red. Would you like to sit down for a minute?" Mom was seething. It must humiliating, not being able to do something as simple as chasing down a plane or not even get to put up with a degradation security scan because the TSA officials were afraid they were going to have to take the paddles to her. Or maybe she didn't even put together that not everyone looks like that after walking briskly from one terminal to another, and she thought that this was just another random inefficiency and humiliation you have to go through in airports. But I noticed, and I also noticed that it took almost the whole flight for the redness to drain from her face.

Mom sure was cranky still when we got back to the ground, and it was everything I could do to convince her to go get the rental car rather than paying a hundred bucks for a cab. I was the one who was in my right mind to drive, so grouchy became my co-pilot. At one point she reached to get something in the back seat, and I noticed that the twisting squeezed the breath out of her and she was winded for a few minutes after the effort. Then, later that weekend she climbed into the passenger seat and flailed her arm trying to reach the door to close it. "I hate it when they do that," she said. What? "Make the door swing so wide that you can't reach it and you have to get back up again to close it." I'd never had that problem. I looked over at her reclined in the seat and realized that she wasn't able to lean her torso out to get to the door handle. I thanked my lucky stars that I still have my range of motion.

The next morning we got to watch Noah become a man. It was my first bar mitzvah, and I enjoyed it for the first hour and a half, but I have to admit that after that I got a little bit bored. The prayer book really confused me and I kept turning the pages the wrong way. I tried to read the phonetic transcriptions of the Hebrew for a little bit, but I just wound up singing "Tralala" most of the time and trying to spot what page the Jews were looking at so that I could pick up the English when that came up again. My ear was desperately looking for something that it could recognize, and eventually it found something that sounded like almeja in one of the choruses. Almeja means "clam" in Spanish. "Mom, I think they're singing about clams," I said. "Clams aren't kosher," she pointed out. "Well duh," I said. "They're probably singing God Save the Clam!" Of course I knew they weren't singing about mollusks, but I felt as out of place as an octopus in a garage in that temple.

The reception was informal, in the lobby of the synagogue with bagels and tunafish, cookies, and potato chips. "Claire, come get a bagel, there are a few with cream cheese." "Did you see there are cream cheese bagels?" "Do you eat fish?" "Here, take a plate, try the cookies." There was nothing on that table that looked appetizing to me, so I took a couple of stalks of celery and a couple of carrots. "You don't fool me for a second," said the new mitzvah's mother, "you didn't put anything on that plate!" and I had to fight another volley of bagels. After that everyone went their separate ways for a few hours, most to eat lunch (for a second time).

Family tree provided for educational purposes only to keep track of the relationship
between people mentioned. Any attempt to invade the privacy of this family would be
really messed up, so please don't.

That night there was a small family gathering at the house to wish Noah even more mozel tavs and I got to know the extended family. I found myself talking to Syd, who, by all accounts had always been a lanky kid, but 65 years had caught him with a bald head and a big pot belly. "I used to be as skinny as Sara," explained Syd, "but now I just like to eat!" Sara's 15 and has been blessed with the body type and height to be a supermodel. When I told him about my plans to see all the monuments, he told me about his treadmill. "Yeah, a couple years ago I started having labored breathing and my doctor told me I'd have to get moving. It's amazing how much better walking on that treadmill makes me feel!" Later, at dinner Syd went up for seconds and thirds, and when there was still meat left when it came time to wash the dishes, he took care of the surplus using his gullet as a garbage disposal.

Syd's daughter, Alissa, was of the type that you know after talking to her for 20 seconds that she will never be cool, not even in the nerdiest crowds. As my dad described her, "She's your stereotypical New York Jew."
"No she's not," I said. "She's not funny." I decided that I really wasn't going to want to talk to her early in the evening when I was telling Syd about my plans to run past all the monuments. "So do you like to run, or do it for some other reason?" she asked. I thought it better not to go into my dysfunctional relationship with running, and told her I liked it. "Oh, so you're crazy." It wasn't so much a witty comment like rocketpants makes when she calls me crazy, it was more like condescendingly stating a fact. I decided I didn't like Alissa, so therefore I give my readers permission to not feel sorry for her. Alissa was also very, very heavy. Her ample rump easily covered an entire couch cushion. Sid was explaining to Sara that she had to look at her family history to know how to take care of herself while she's still young. Alissa pitched in her unsolicited advice, "Chocolate is the cure for pretty much anything. You have really bad PMS, just drink a glass of whole milk chocolate milk..."
"I don't really like whole milk," said Sara, I'm sure trying to deflect the conversation from her menstrual cycle in front of all her aunts and uncles.
"They also found that chocolate milk is the best recovery drink that there is for athletes, even better than Gatorade."
I tried to bite my tongue not wanting to get into any conversation with Alissa if it could be at all avoided. She was a know-it-all who had to know more than you about everything and have the last say at all costs. I mean, this kind of behavior is acceptable in a college student, but this woman was pushing 40. Not only that but she was one of those people whose sense of humor is so awkward it makes your skin crawl. I mean, she was weird. She did fencing in high school and now is very active in her Medieval reenactment group. I really didn't want to get stuck in a conversation with Alissa, but no one else seemed to want to get in a conversation with Alissa either, and when the awkward silence was about to kill me I ventured a very flat, "Well, yeah, they say that exercise improves pretty much every aspect of your life, physically and mentally."
"Oh, I can't do exercise, It makes me sick." Alissa interjected, desperate not to let the conversation turn away from her.
I looked her up and down. Of course it does, lard ass, I thought. I kept going like I hadn't been done with what I was saying. Save the conversation, I thought, don't let her ruin it for the rest of us! "Yeah, they say that it can improve your chances of fighting just about every disease, even mental problems and they find that active kids do better in school..."
"Because I have asthma," she went on when I ran out of things to say. "Yeah, I used to have really bad allergies, but then one day my allergies got better but my asthma got really bad. So that's what I meant when I said exercise makes me sick. Because breathing is good. Yeah, you never know how nice it is till you can't do it. So exercise makes me sick..."
Sara swooped to the rescue and started talking about how (pushing 6 feet), she's taller than all her friends. "Well at least you can reach things," I said. They'd been making short jokes at me all day and I'd started to accept it. "And no one ever picks you up off the ground, I bet. I used to get picked up all the time. I'd just be standing there and someone would grab me around the waist and lift me off the ground."
"Yeah, me too." Alissa had decided to play the short card. She wasn't really short, but since she couldn't compare to Sara in height, it would be easier to jump in on my team. "I have all these friends that are like 6'7" and stuff..." Nobody has "all these friends" who are over 6'7, not even basketball players, I thought, but held my tongue. "Yeah, they pick me up all the time. You don't know how disorienting it is to be on the ground and then suddenly you're not." I looked at Alissa, she couldn't weigh less than 300 lb. I didn't believe for a second that anything but a forklift could lift her off the ground. Why would someone do that? Lie just to be a part of a conversation? She oozed low self-esteem so bad that she made everyone around her feel uncomfortable, but did she really thing that bold-faced lies like this were a way to get someone to be your friend? And did she really think that if she told doozies like this that I would begin to believe that she was thin? I just didn't get it.

Syd's sister's name was Karen. Karen had the sarcastic wit and dry delivery that I stay up nights wishing that I had. We like Karen. "What are you going to do in DC tomorrow?" she asked. I told her about my plan to run past all the monuments. "They've made it harder than it used to be. You can't get as close to them as you used to in a car." I thought she was talking about parking, but still I grasped that I wasn't understanding something. As I usually do when I don't understand something I kept talking like I knew exactly what was going on. Later that night her brother, Norman was gave us driving directions to the Mall. "So when you get to Constitution St. you're going to start looking for parking..."
"No, Norm, they want to see all the monuments," she corrected him.
"Right, she's going to run past them," explained Norman.
"What do you mean? I thought she was taking the car?" asked Karen. I got the idea that none of us were trying to be witty and this was a real conversation.
"No, like on my feet," I explained.
"You didn't know that that's what she was going to do?" asked Norman.
"Well yeah, she told me... I just didn't know why anyone would choose to do that, like voluntarily." She wasn't kidding.

So I guess this is what other people do. They eat bagels when they're not hungry and eat whatever's left over, even when they've had their fill. Exercise makes them sick and when they have to run to catch a train, they have to risk cardiac arrest. And when they want to see a whole park full of monuments, they need to reserve more than an hour for it. I couldn't wait to get away from the "normal" people for a bit and get back to my "crazy" lifestyle.

We woke up at 7:30, and by 9:00 we had parked and I was ready to go. I filled my bottle with water that tasted like dirt from a water fountain and started running. I wasn't in any hurry and before I'd even run 5 minutes I'd stopped my watch three times to take pictures and cross streets. I didn't really have a set rout planned out, so I just ran until I saw the big stuff, and then ran towards it. I started out running towards the Capital Building.
As usual I tried to include myself in the photo only until I realized that it was essentially impossible. I figure that the abysmal quality of the shots is proof enough that I was, in fact, the photographer (and not just a google image source). But meanwhile, I'm sure you can recognize the top of my head by this time. .

Soon I came upon a greek-style building that had a set of stairs just begging to be run up, so I did. Had I had a running partner to take a cheezy Rocky imitation photo I would have. Instead you'll just have to use your imagination.


Next I came up on the Washington Monument. I wasn't too enthused about it. I mean, it's an obelisk. Boston has one just like it, and I'm sure there are others too. I bet George Washington feels a bit gypped.
Next I ran past the reflecting pool and up the interminable steps to the Lincoln Monument (where I took the above picture). I realized half way up that I really should have counted all those damn steps and wondered if I could go back and count with a magnifying glass and a penny later. I mean, if they put a tiny little Lincoln in his monument on the penny, they probably have the right number of tiny little copper steps, right?
I knew that the Vietnam memorial was close by, but purposely avoided it. It was Veterans' day, and although I was having fun not taking the symbolism of the presidents' monuments seriously, I didn't want to do the same with any war memorials. I inadvertently passed Korea on the way towards the Jefferson Memorial and it gave me the heebie jeebies. That memorial is way too life-like.

If you know the layout of the Mall you know that the Jefferson Memorial is set off from the rest, way off on a little peninsula jutting off into the Potomack. In the park next to the river I saw a 10k race finishing up, and I kicked myself for not looking for races before coming down. It was a beautiful day, though, and I didn't need a race to enjoy running along the river with the fall colors all around me. My phone seems to have a mean streak to it seeing as the picture with the prettiest colors came out with the worst lighting.

Finally I ran back to the Mall and was surprised to see my mom sitting on a bench and find myself already back to where I'd started. "I missed the White House!" I said, disappointed. "Where is it?" I had really wanted to see the White House with the same kind of fascination as people who like to glare at photos of people they hate. I wanted to see where the bastard lived. I told my mom I'd be right back, looked at a map, and ran off to find the White House.

Coming of age during the "W" administration I'm suspicious of the US government and anything associated with patriotism, and truth be told, DC made me nervous. I was quite glad I was running, just in case someone tried to chase me down and send me to Guantanamo for ex-patriating or just thinking unpatriotic thoughts, I was already prepared to run away from them. When I passed the White House I didn't linger so as not to endure too violent a visceral reaction to what I knew to be inside. I was afraid that all the men standing around in suits with ear pieces in their ear could read my thoughts, so I tried to think patriotic thoughts. They came out kind of like this:

With running, photos, and crossing streets my whole Washington DC tour came out to about 7.5 miles in an hour and a half (1:11:30 of which were running). So maybe I'm "crazy", maybe a bit "abnormal": I don't risk cardiac arrest when I'm late for a flight, I don't eat food I don't need, I don't think chocolate is a cure-all for everything from PMS to high blood pressure, but in the whole busy weekend, I was the only one who managed to get the whole historic Washington DC trip in on a beautiful day. Call me crazy, but I'd rather do it my way.