Planes, trains and automobiles.

We were blessed with a trip to Washington DC this weekend.  I tell you, the trip was grand!  My SIL ran her 6th marathon-- the Marine Corps Marathon.  The government arguing came close to canceling our trip.  MCM was 2 days from canceling.  We're so glad that the government reopened so that we could enjoy everything.

And I mean everything!

Boy howdy, I'm still tired.  Before I list a chunk of stuff, I'll tell you that my SIL ran a great marathon!  She finished in 4:09.  (I told her that I could never do it in 9:04.)  The structure to the marathon was a bit different and she did confirm that it bottle necked a bit with the narrower running path.  Between that and the 8 minute stop to use the loo, she was behind a bit on the time she wanted.  We thought she did great!  She is recovering from a hamstring injury and earlier this summer, she didn't see this as a possibility.  It was wonderful for her and my BIL to take us along for their ride to DC.

Where did we go?  More like where didn't we go?  Here goes:

We stayed at a lovely hotel in Rosslyn, around the corner from Iwo Jima.
National Gallery of Art
American Art Museum
American History Museum and butterfly exhibit (surprise, surprise)
Air and Space Museum
National Policemen's Memorial (panel 54, line 13- if memory serves) Hubs & SIL's uncle is on there.
Vietnam Wall
Arlington National Cemetery/changing of the guard/wreath laying ceremony/temporary JFK flame/amphitheater
National Mall
Reflecting pool (K's only request)
WWII memorial
Lincoln Monument
Washington Monument
The White House
The Smithsonian Castle (a walk past, but beautiful!)

We walked and walked.  I'm sure I forgot places to list down here.  I can tell you that I'm quite proficient in using the Metro.  Smart Trip card-- take me away!  I can tell you that for MCM, they close chunks of streets down in Rosslyn, which is where the start/finish to the marathon is.  When you have 32,000 people and their curb crews, you end up with a gigantic clot.  This is Rosslyn Metro Center.  People were jammed. I'm claustrophobic.  When we finally got to the largest escalator that I've ever seen ever, it rode 1/2 way up and stopped.  (It was making sounds and smelling not so good.)  It took me a second to realize that we weren't racing backwards, which I thanked God for.  (Perhaps audibly.)  We hoofed it up the rest of the way.  Wow.  We were glad that our flight out wasn't until 9:30 PM.  Truly, it took until about 5 PM to clear the up the jam.  When we walked to the station to go to Reagan National, the remaining folks were getting on the marathon shuttle buses.  If we had an earlier flight, we would have never made it.

Grainy photo compliments of my cell.

 I'll have more photos to post.  I have been busy, tired and yesterday I had a rather debilitating migraine that thanks to coworkers, their magical hands and migraine products, I pulled through.  I have seriously not had a migraine like that in 7 years.

I can tell you that following someone running a marathon is like running one (sort of) yourself.  Because the tracker system wasn't providing updates until AFTER mile 16 (I don't know if it was a system glitch or not), but we didn't know when K actually got started.  (They have staggered starts.)  We missed her by just a few minutes at mile 4 and 9 1/2.  We were all just sick about it.  We made up for it at mile 16 and got extra credit at mile 24.  (Because the marathon running crowd was thin, I was able to step into the marathon path and pull a 20 photo run of her on my camera.  My BIL got a photo, too.)  The girls saw her and K wanted Hubs to jump in and run with her.  He had no bib, had a fleece coat on that was loaded down with my soda, bananas and probably half of a brochure rack.  He ran about 15 feet with her until he got to the corner and let her roll on her own.  There was a man with a machine gun.  Hubs wasn't into being shot.

Speaking of guns and armor and whatnot, there was a definite police presence and they weren't shy about it.  Outside of the Pentagon was a bomb squad truck.  We saw men with bullet proof vests and many things with which to shoot with.  There were snipers, though the only one I personally saw was on the Pentagon.  I was glad to see it.  I wasn't doing anything wrong, so I appreciate the people out there protecting us.

Thanks all!

With that, I'll have a photo post of all of the stuff that you've already seen in books.  For now, I must go hang from a ceiling above the sales desk and set Christmas up there before the customers arrive.

Have a great day!