July 27, 2006: Virginia & Washington DC

And now for some signs of the North (Turnabout is fair play, don't you think?):

• Terrible traffic (e.g. the Capitol Beltway)

• Toll roads (e.g. the New Jersey Turnpike)

• Ambiguous or absent signage

• Never-ending road construction

• Ivy League universities (we passed by Princeton this evening)

• Ethnic and linguistic diversity

We thanked our hosts for showing us a splendid time and departed Alexandria this morning. Before leaving Virginia, though, we first stopped in Falls Church, which is the next town over. There we had lunch with Jonathan, a distant cousin of Debbie’s by marriage. He's quite a contrast to yesterday's lunch date.

Jonathan is a neurologist and Army colonel who used to live near Seattle when he was based at Madigan Army Hospital at Fort Lewis. His father is on the medical faculty at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey; they recently wrote a paper together on the prevention of Parkinson’s disease using calcium and vitamin C. The areas of Jonathan’s expertise include medical responses to chemical, biological, and radiological warfare. (Note the subversive sign that Tommy is flashing.)

We spoke about various family members, about his new job as an aide to a two-star general, about his conservative political views, about how little affinity he has for the Beltway culture, and about the musical retreat he attends every year at this time in Bennington, Vermont. Jonathan’s a talented classical pianist and violist. Since Debbie plays the violin, he suggested we visit him in Bennington, but I explained that as delightful as it sounded, such a diversion would be too ambitious even for this already-ambitious trip.

We revisited Washington as the boys hadn’t yet seen any of its many monuments commemorating the defining events and leaders in American history:

the Vietnam Memorial,

the Washington Monument,

and the Lincoln Memorial,

where we contemplated Lincoln’s melancholy, avuncular visage,

and read the idealistic words of his Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address incised on the walls beside his statue.

We're wilting in this photo. The heat and humidity, which had let up for a couple of days, returned with a vengeance today.




We crawled through the rush-hour traffic north of Washington, drove to New Jersey, and checked into the Kenilworth Inn, a few miles from the special event we’ll attend in the morning.