Quick Trip to DC

Mark and I have been saying for a while that we should take an overnight trip to DC sometime. I recently found out that one of my favorite musicals was in DC for a few weeks, so I figured that would be the perfect excuse to go spend a night in the city.

Mark found us a room at the State Plaza Hotel, fairly close to the metro and the National Mall. We got there well before check-in time and asked nicely if we could leave our bags with them while we grabbed some lunch, figuring it was too early to check in. Instead, we found ourselves with a free upgrade and early check-in - nice!

The room was like a small apartment, and even had a kitchen. It was pretty sweet.

The view looking west. We were right near the George Washington University, so there was a lot going on down on the streets. I was geeking out because they were landing south at DCA and I could see all of my airplanes.

We hung out in the room for a few minutes, then went out to find some lunch.

We decided to take the scenic route past the White House. I think this might be the sidewalk they closed just a couple days later. We eventually wound up at District Taco, stuffed ourselves with delicious tacos, then went on to our next stop...

...the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. And home of Julia Child's kitchen.

And this guy. The transportation sections were pretty neat, but overall the place was absolutely slammed. It seemed like every school in the area must have picked that specific day for a field trip. At any rate, we did at least see a few cool things before making our way back out to the National Mall.

We passed by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I've heard that this is a really cool museum, so I'm really looking forward to checking it out someday. It's pretty tricky to get tickets, though; it's so popular that timed tickets get sold out really fast, so the other option is to wake up first thing in the morning and try to grab one of the handful of daily tickets they release each day. I didn't know that was a thing until it was too late to get tickets for the day, so I just settled for admiring the outside of the building for now.

It was a really nice day, so we spent some time wandering around the Mall.

We eventually made our way down to the Lincoln Memorial and took a break on the steps.

We weren't the only ones with that idea.

We poked our heads in to say hello to Lincoln, then wandered back to the hotel. We got cleaned up, then wandered over to Graffiato for dinner. It's owned by Mike Isabella, who was on Top Chef a while ago. Everything was really good (and none of my pictures turned out well, haha), and we were out of there with plenty of time to get to the show.

Ragtime was at the Ford's Theatre, and you could see the box where Lincoln was shot right next to the stage, which was crazy. At any rate, the theater was very cool and the show was fantastic. I've wanted to see this show since I was in high school, so it was great to finally see it in person.

After the show, we were walking to our next stop when we came across this. Creepy!

We eventually made our way to the Jack Rose Dining Saloon. It's got a huuuuge selection of whiskies, so Mark was really looking forward to it. And when we got there (at 11pm on a Tuesday), it was absolutely slammed. We couldn't even get into the downstairs room with all of the cool whisky, and when we did manage to squeeze into the upstairs room that seemed more like a regular bar, it was standing room only and you could barely move at that. I don't even know how we would have gotten up to the bar to get anything to drink. We decided to cut our losses and try again some other time...

...which is how we wound up over at Rebellion. We were almost the only ones here! They had some pretty cool things, so we had a couple drinks and talked to the bartender lady for a little while before heading out.

...and this is how you properly end an evening in DC: pizza. We got an Uber back to the hotel after that and called it a night.

We had originally planned to go for a run through the National Mall the next morning, but when we woke up there was a line of rain moving in. You could see it getting closer, so we decided to skip the run, checked out of the hotel, and got an Uber to Georgetown.

I thought this building looked pretty cool. We started with a really good breakfast at a small bakery, then spent a couple hours wandering through some stores before eventually making our way back to the metro and heading back home. It had been a fun quick trip, and I'd happily do it again sometime!

DC with a side of New Zealand

I somehow wound up with two days off in a row this past week. I can't remember the last time that happened! The weather was pretty bad Tuesday so Mark and I stayed home and got caught up on some stuff around the house, but I wanted to get out and do something on Wednesday. It wound up being too cold to hike and too windy to fly, so we decided to head to DC instead. Did you know that they offer free tours of the Capitol Building?

The rotunda is crazy. It sits below the dome, and it's 180 feet from the floor to the top. Hallways branch off of the sides leading to the Senate and House of Representatives.

I had some fun playing with my wide-angle lens.   :)

The sun was streaming in the windows and you could see the columns outside. The Frieze of American History wraps around the entire circle below the windows; it starts with the landing of Columbus and ends with the Wright Brothers.

The Apotheosis of Washington is a huge fresco at the top of the rotunda. It looks tiny from the floor but the figures are actually 15 feet tall. There are a lot of paintings along the walls in the rotunda, too, including the one that appears on the back of the two dollar bill. (I somehow didn't get any pictures of these! I guess I was having too much fun taking pictures of the ceiling.)

After ogling over the Rotunda, we moved on to the National Statuary Hall. It was originally where the House of Representatives met, but since the acoustics were terrible and the House outgrew the room, it's full of brass and marble statues now. You'll just have to imagine what the statues look like since those pictures turned out blurry, but the ceiling was honestly more fun to look at anyway.

We passed John Boehner's office on the way back to the Rotunda. It's a shame he wasn't there actually working...it would be nice to know what the heck is going on with my job in the very near future. No worries, it's not like I need a paycheck or anything. Bah.

The last stop on the tour was an area directly under the Rotunda called the Crypt. It was originally designed to be the site of George Washington's tomb but both he and his wife died before it was completed and his family refused to let his body be moved from Mount Vernon. There's a stone star in the floor in the middle of the room that marks out the point where DC is divided into its four quadrants (even though it's not actually the geographic center of the city).

After the tour, we made sure to check out the East Front of the Capitol. I haven't been on this side too many times, so it was neat to see.

We made our way back down to the car so Mark could feed the meter, and I spent a few minutes taking some picture of the West Front of the building.

Best parking spot ever! It's only two hour parking, but Mark moved the car up a spot, paid, and we were off to do some more exploring.

It was pretty cold and windy, so we figured we'd head inside to someplace a bit warmer: the US Botanic Garden. Mmm, palm trees...

Since it's February there wasn't too much in bloom, but we did see some orchids.

After wandering through the gardens for a while we made our way over to the Air and Space Museum so I could drool on a few planes.

They had a pretty neat ATC display, including a side-view video of all the air traffic in the US over the course of a day. It was neat to see the blips jumping up and down.

We finished wandering around fairly close to 5pm, and since traffic was absolutely awful on the way back we made our way over to Cassatt's in Arlington. It's a New Zealand cafe, and man did it make me miss NZ! As soon as they set my flat white (kind of like a latte) down on the table in a big old coffee cup I got homesick for the bakeries over there. The food was amazing; I had a pear walnut salad that tasted a lot like my mom's girly salad, and some chicken with coconut curry. I finished it all off with a warm brownie with ice cream. Heaven.   :)

Flying, Cake, and Culture

In late November I got the chance to go up with our Chief CFI to review spins. She hadn't done them in a while and wanted to review them a bit before trying to teach them to someone else. Since I love all things inverted (or semi-inverted), I jumped at the chance to ride along!

Normally you wouldn't want to see quite so much ground out of the windshield...but then again, it's not often you deliberately spin a 172. We had a hard time keeping it in the spin; I think the most we got out of it was one and a half turns. It was still a lot of fun, though!

My birthday is December 1st, and this year I was supposed to run a half marathon in Annapolis. Thanks to a hamstring/groin injury that even now isn't fully fixed, I spent a decent bit of November and December in some serious pain, so I deferred my race entry to next year. I still had the day off, though, so I decided to make good use of it...

...and Zach came down for a quick visit! We put him to work helping with the Christmas lights. I had hoped to take him flying but the visibility was pretty cruddy all day, so we hung out at home, walked downtown for lunch, and spent the afternoon cleaning out my closet. I know, not the most exciting thing, but what Zach got done in an afternoon would have taken me a month to do!

We went out to dinner in Culpeper and managed to find a fairly decent sushi place (which made my night!), then stopped to get our Christmas tree(s). Yes, the dogs got their own tree again this year. After dinner it was back home for some cake and cookies (thanks, Mom!) and ice cream, and we spent the rest of the night setting up the trees and watching various Christmas specials.

I spent a good bit of the next few days in some serious pain from the hamstring/groin thing, but after seeing a doctor and a chiropractor I could at least sit again. Good thing, since right after seeing the chiropractor we hopped in the car to head to the Kennedy Center. I had never been to a ballet, and when I saw that Ballet West (from Breaking Pointe, if anyone's seen that series) was going to be performing The Nutcracker I figured it would be neat to see.

I didn't take any pictures of the ballet (I highly doubt you're allowed to), but during intermission I noticed how pretty the ceiling was. Ooo, sparkly...

My last flight of 2012 was a cross country with one of my students. We were planning to go to 2G4 - Garrett County, in MD, but the weather wasn't cooperating so we went to KXSA (Tappahannock, VA) instead. Oh well...a shorter cross country is better than no cross country, and we both got another stamp in our VA airport passports.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

 Last week Mark and I got up disgustingly early to drive in rush hour traffic to downtown DC. On purpose. On our day off. I promise, we haven't lost our minds! (I'll also apologize right now for how many pictures are in this post, but I promise it's worth it!)

We're both training for a couple races - I'm running a half marathon in about a month and a half, and we're both running a full marathon this fall - so we decided to take advantage of the great weather and go for a run in downtown DC. We parked at West Potomac Park, just south of the Tidal Basin, and we were off! We ran past the Jefferson Memorial...

...the Washington Monument...

...and the Lincoln Memorial.

Since we were feeling a little ambitious, we decided to add some steps to our run to say hi to both Lincoln...

...and Jefferson.  :)

I always take my phone with when we run outside, and my Google tracker works great! I like how you can see where we ran up the steps of the monuments.   :)   Altogether, we ran just over 4.5 miles.

After a quick stop at the car, we grabbed our folding camp chairs and I grabbed my camera gear and we made our way back up to the National Mall...

...along with several thousand other people. What, you might be asking, could possibly draw this many people outside all at once?

The Space Shuttle Discovery flyby!!!!

Discovery was on its way to the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles (its new home - can't wait to go see it!), but made a detour over DC first.

Mark had one of my cameras; most of his pictures are of me taking pictures.  :)

I loved how so many people piled out onto the tops of the buildings as the shuttle flew by.

This may be one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken.   :)

After flying several loops around the National Mall, Discovery and its T-38 escort disappeared off to the west. 

All that running and shuttle-watching made us hungry, so we stopped to grab some ridiculously tasty tacos on the way home. Oh baby, guacamole...mmm...   :)

It was amazing to get to see the shuttle in person on its last flight! However, a tiny part of me wished that I had been sitting on position to get the chance to work the flight. I mean, how many controllers can say they've worked the space shuttle? I wrote that off as one of those things that I'd never get to do and moved on. So when I walked into the ops room this past Friday morning and the supervisor pulled me aside to brief me before I sat down on the East departures, imagine my surprise when he handed me a flight strip and told me that the shuttle carrier would be departing shortly for New York, carrying Enterprise!! Shortly after I sat down, the supervisor briefly stopped my east departures, and almost simultaneously Air Force One departed Andrews AFB and the shuttle carrier departed Dulles. I got the president on course and sent him off to the Center as the shuttle carrier made the turn into my airspace. 

Best traffic call I've ever made: "traffic eleven o'clock, seven miles, east-bound, one one thousand, heavy Boeing 747 carrying the space shuttle". And it's possible that I'm the only controller ever that's had both the space shuttle and the president in their airspace at the same time. Priceless.   :)