Parkour, Celebs, Day-drinking, and Three-hole potties: My trip to DC

I'm in a dumb phase lately.  I can hardly think a coherent thought.  Tonight I sat next to a man I work with every single day and I could not for the life of me remember his name.  Then I had to get money from the ATM and I couldn't remember my pin number.  Jesus, what is happening to me?  And the dumbest thing I've done is totally forgetting to write about my trip to DC with my sisters!!!

We went for a long weekend because Amy was going to run in the Marine Marathon, but she got a deferment for a year because she didn't exactly train in any way whatsoever.  Oh well, we decided to go to DC anyway and it was FUN.

The first night we checked into our hotel and got settled, then went for a walk.  Our hotel was right downtown, kind of by the white house, so we walked down there to see it.  It was lit up pink for breast cancer month.

Then we were walking around and Beth was talking about how she is really into Parkour lately.  You know, Parkour?  Like this:

Amy and I didn't quite believe her and told her to prove it.  She took on the challenge and jumped off a one foot step, and then leap-frogged this barrier-thing which would have been really cool if she didn't stub her crotch and fall down.  If the barrier was three inches shorter, it might have been impressive.  So then I tried to jump over a fire-hydrant but forgot I was wearing a skort and almost killed myself.  We are lucky we came back from Washington with all our teeth.  Here's Amy Parkouring her ass all over the place.

The next day Amy and I went for a run.  No, you shut up.  I can run!  We ran for about 23 miles all over the Mall area.

 Amy says it absolutely was not 23 miles but I don't know how she knows it wasn't because we didn't map it out or anything. It was probably pretty close to 23.  

We went to the Holocaust Museum.  Depressing.  They have a gift shop in the lobby so you can shop for key chains and coffee mugs that say "We Shall Never Forget" all over it.  There was even a little stuffed bear in a trench coat who was wearing a little tag that said, "I'm a refugee."  It was a bit much.  Amy thinks that a bar would do better business than a gift shop because after going through and seeing all the horrors that was the Holocaust, a person really needs a good stiff drink.

So then we went to have a good stiff drink, which leads me to the day-drinking portion of our trip.  We did a lot of that.  That's what vacations are for, right?  At one bar we sat next to a guy that told us that Chris Brown of beating-the-shit-out-of-Rhianna fame was arrested at the W Hotel right across the street from us. Turned out to be true.  Some guy photo-bombed a picture Brown was in so he ran after the guy and mercilessly beat him.  Seems like an appropriate response.  We also went to the W Hotel (fancy schmancy) to have a drink in the bar that is on the roof.  It was nice but every table had a reserved sign on it and nobody came to sit at them.  I got a free beer.

Saturday we went to MOUNT VERNON!  We took a boat from DC up the Potomac to the estate.

Amy and Kristen on the boat to Mount Vernon.  They can
barely contain their excitement.

 Unfortunately we only got four hours to tour the place.  I thought it was kind of a rush, but nobody else did.  You can see barely anything in four hours.  We hit the high points:  The house, museum, tomb, wharf-area.

This guy took us through a hay-bale maze.  What's the point of a hay-bale maze, you ask?  I don't know.  You can see right over it and figure out your path.  Easy.  This guy said to shut our eyes and go through conga style.  It was weird.

Then I saw one of my favorite Mount Vernon attractions:

The three-hole outhouse.  Amy asked me once if I could meet George Washington and talk to him, but only if we were both using the three-hole outhouse, would I do it?  Probably.

The next day was the marathon so we went to watch the runners.  It was a beautiful day and it was fun to watch the marathon.  The people at the front of the pack run fast the whole time.  I mean FAST.  It's not a sprint, j'all!

We met some cool people while we were there.  We saw Senator Franken at the airport and said hello to him.  We met a retired Capitol Police guy at a diner one morning and got him talking about senators who are all bluster in public and who cry in the elevator at the end of the day.  And we met Carlos Arredondo, an activist who helped save people after the Boston bombing.  I recognized him from a picture and we talked with him for a while.  He is a fantastically nice person.  I was really happy we got to meet him and I got to take a picture with him and an ice-cream sandwich.

The last day we were there we walked around for miles and miles and miles.  We went to the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery too.

Amy took this picture of me nerding it up in front of a statue of George Washington surrendering his commission after the Revolutionary War.  He was dreamy.

I also got this really cool photo of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.  Nobody was there right then because the marathon was going on and everyone was cheering on the runners.

But before I got that good picture, I got this one:

This lady literally ran into the frame at the last second.  I wish I knew who she was so I could send her the picture.