On The Road Again: Washington DC

I've been in Washington DC for the past couple of days, so posting has been light. The pic below is from the World War II Memorial which is in between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Note how the eagles face is turned to the right (toward the arrows) instead of the left, as it is today (toward the olive branch). When Harry Truman mentioned to Winston Churchill that he had ordered the change as a reflection of the post-war, peacetime aims of the US government (Dept. of War then becoming the Dept. of Defense, etc) Churchil said, "You should put it on a swivel." Heh.

Couple of other thoughts about DC:

• Schools out and the town is flooded with families with kids. Young people everywhere you look; it makes me feel somewhat optimistic about the future. "Yes," said my 19-year old son, "until you hit the House and Senate office buildings and meet the staffers; you realize then that they're running the country and you're quickly brought back to reality."

• Speaking of reality, I strolled down to the Capitol building and discovered that the western entrance is being guarded by Capitol police armed with rifles. Big rifles. Very big rifles. Haven't seen that before.

• If you plan on driving in or around the DC area, bring maps and have someone navigating -- carefully. The freeways here are among the most poorly marked I've seen in the US. And I've driven all over the country.

• Most architecturally interesting museum building in DC: The National Museum of the American Indian.

  

• Have any of you flown recently? Are you finding what I'm finding -- that the odds of being stranded in a stopover airport are alarmingly high? I don't like to have a layover of less that 90-120 minutes because the in-bound flights are almost always late. This means you stand a pretty good chance of missing your connecting flight. I hate when that happens.

Anyhow, I just read back over this post and realized it sounds like I'm griping. Sorry about that.

See you soon.