Capitol Building Under Restoration

Planes, trains and automobiles, just not in that order, but you’ve got to love the patter. I was on hold, waiting to schedule a cab to the airport and in order to entertain the customers, they tell jokes, cab jokes: A passenger in the backseat has a question for the cab driver, so to get his attention; he taps him on the shoulder. The cab immediately swerves into a lamppost. The passenger apologies, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” The cab driver replies, “That’s alright, this is my first day as a cab driver, I’ve been driving a hearse for twenty-five years.”

We did see a bad accident on the way to the airport, but we were not involved. Our cab was a Prius, with 220,000 miles on it. I hope that our Prius is still running as well as that one was doing, when we hit that mileage mark. A field trip of forty fifth-graders from Omaha was on our flight. They reminded me of the similar field trip that Dave and I took to DC when he was in junior high. The Southwest flight attendants tend to ham up the preflight spiel and with this large eleven year old audience, they were in fine form. Because of high winds, the landing was a bit rough, but the kids came through again. With every bump or jump on final, the kids in the back of the bus would whoop it up, roller-coaster style.

We landed and then sloughed our way by foot, roller bags in tow, to the hotel. Then we took the Metro downtown and then started walking around. We saw the exterior of the National Archives, but the line was too long to get in. We toured the National Gallery of Art instead. Afterwards, we toured the National Museum of the American Indian, which we closed. So we called it a day. We had Afghani for lunch and Legal Seafood for dinner. I haven’t eaten at Legal Seafood since my summer at MIT, many years ago, but that’s another story.

You can see in the photo of the Capitol building that it is under repair. The dome is encased in scaffolding and part of the scaffolding is covered with a tarp. Anne thinks it looks like a Band-Aid. I think that the idea of a Band-Aid on the Capitol’s dome is way too allegorical of the political problems in our country.