Okay, so my very brief DC Memorial Day excursion is now over two weeks past. I could have taken the same trip a couple of times over during the period since my last post, but here is the exciting conclusion anyway.
Sunday Night
If you recall, the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City had been taken over by biker families participating in the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally. When the Roommate and I returned to the hotel late Sunday night, expensive Coldstone in hand, the bikers were still everywhere. Except for one guy waiting outside. Very conspicuously. He was a tall African-American man in white slacks, a pale pink sweater, and leather loafers, with a folded newspaper under his arm. In fact, he was the first guest other than ourselves that we had seen at the hotel sans leather vest covered in patches. When we walked inside, I couldn’t help but ask the Roommate if she had seen him. She said she had, but after discussing it some more, it was clear we were talking about two different people, only one of whom had sufficient poise to wear pink cable knit at a biker rally (the other had chosen a nice blue chambray shirt).
And then we saw the sign in the lobby. It appears that, in addition to being the official Rolling Thunder headquarters for the weekend, our hotel was hosting an additional conference:
The Positive Black Man Convention.
Now, I have scoured the internet for evidence that said convention took place, but have found none. But I am not joking. We saw the sign, it said this very thing, in a fancy font no less. And in the event you feel inclined to google it yourself, I want to assure you it had nothing to do with HIV. We saw the attendees, all of whom appeared very positive and confident. We also saw the women who, with word of said conference, had conveniently dropped in at the hotel bar that same night, only to find themselves surrounded by drunken biker vets, which sadly reminded me of the dashed expectations I’ve had at every LDS singles conference I’ve attended, and by “every,” I mean “the only,” but I digress…
It was also on Sunday night that I realized just how important it is to keep one’s patchy leather vest on at all times during a biker rally. When the Roommate and I got off the elevator on the sixteenth floor, there was a group of bikers standing around talking. It was pretty late by that point, and one of them was wearing his pajamas and had a serious case of bed-head but, sure enough, he had put the vest on over his jammies in order to chat in the hallway with his friends.
Sunday Night
If you recall, the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City had been taken over by biker families participating in the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally. When the Roommate and I returned to the hotel late Sunday night, expensive Coldstone in hand, the bikers were still everywhere. Except for one guy waiting outside. Very conspicuously. He was a tall African-American man in white slacks, a pale pink sweater, and leather loafers, with a folded newspaper under his arm. In fact, he was the first guest other than ourselves that we had seen at the hotel sans leather vest covered in patches. When we walked inside, I couldn’t help but ask the Roommate if she had seen him. She said she had, but after discussing it some more, it was clear we were talking about two different people, only one of whom had sufficient poise to wear pink cable knit at a biker rally (the other had chosen a nice blue chambray shirt).
And then we saw the sign in the lobby. It appears that, in addition to being the official Rolling Thunder headquarters for the weekend, our hotel was hosting an additional conference:
The Positive Black Man Convention.
Now, I have scoured the internet for evidence that said convention took place, but have found none. But I am not joking. We saw the sign, it said this very thing, in a fancy font no less. And in the event you feel inclined to google it yourself, I want to assure you it had nothing to do with HIV. We saw the attendees, all of whom appeared very positive and confident. We also saw the women who, with word of said conference, had conveniently dropped in at the hotel bar that same night, only to find themselves surrounded by drunken biker vets, which sadly reminded me of the dashed expectations I’ve had at every LDS singles conference I’ve attended, and by “every,” I mean “the only,” but I digress…
It was also on Sunday night that I realized just how important it is to keep one’s patchy leather vest on at all times during a biker rally. When the Roommate and I got off the elevator on the sixteenth floor, there was a group of bikers standing around talking. It was pretty late by that point, and one of them was wearing his pajamas and had a serious case of bed-head but, sure enough, he had put the vest on over his jammies in order to chat in the hallway with his friends.
Monday
Monday was largely museum day, so I promise to keep it brief, because I am well-aware that it is more entertaining to listen to someone read a dictionary than recap a museum trip. We started out at the National Gallery—both the classic and contemporary buildings. The National Gallery is so chock-full of famous works by Rembrandt, Bruegher, de Goya, Degas, Rodin (see above), Monet, Manet, Renoir, Seurat, Cassatt, Lautrec, Picasso, Matisse, Warhol, Johns, and Rothko—to name a few—that it feels like being totally star-struck at an Oscar party.
We finished with the NGs in late afternoon and, once again, had yet to really eat for the day. The Roommate wanted to check out the National Museum of the American Indian, which, embarrassingly for an Arizonan, I had never been to before. It was awesome, of course, especially a display about women’s traditional beaded dresses and how they were made, but also awesome was the overpriced food court, arguably the best of all the museums. They were serving up tons of native foodstuffs, but the Roommate and I settled for a snack of fry bread and honey (see below), a State Fair staple where I come from. Yum.
It was closing time when we left the AI museum, but we happened to find out the Air & Space museum was staying open late. We breezed through it in about an hour and largely had the place to ourselves—unlike every other time I’ve been there when the place is crawling with maniacal kids. I kind of miss the days when kids didn’t have cell phones and therefore had more incentive to remain under the watchful eye of their parents rather than get lost in a strange and crowded place. Coincidentally, this also reminded me of the State Fair, where I once got lost as a small child and it was kind of traumatic and I just sat down and waited to be kidnapped, but then somehow I was reunited with my parents. Hooray.
Monday night we took the metro up to Adams Morgan in search of some good food and also so I could show the Roommate what I perceive to be the world’s longest and scariest escalator. We found this great café right by the station called Open City that had outdoor seating. There, we made friends with a couple visiting their teenaged son, who worked at the café, and a girl who decided to rollerskate from her apartment to meet a friend at the café after finding an old pair of skates in her closet when looking for shoes. Skating proved harder than she remembered. Luckily, she ran into someone she knew on the way there, who pretty much pulled her to the restaurant, but she was worried about how she would get back home. As we left before she did, we never found out if she did or not. I suppose we wouldn’t have anyway.
Tuesday
Our perfect weather disappeared on Tuesday. It was overcast with about 414% humidity, or at least it felt that way. As we had an afternoon plane to catch in Baltimore, we decided to head up to Charm City and explore it a bit. I refuse to apologize for the fact that my goal for Tuesday was completely vice-related: eat a Maryland crabcake. I lived in Maryland when I was a wee lass and have a distinct memory of Dave and Mary taking me and Mrs. Gee to the Baltimore Harbor where we looked at a barrel of live blue crabs and a fisherman let one walk around on his leather-gloved hand for our entertainment. Thus, my infallible memories from age four led me to believe that some sort of fish market on the Baltimore Harbor was THE place to find the perfect crabcake. The Roommate and I did some Internet research the night before and found a fish market right off the harbor, right in the middle of downtown, that had rave reviews.
The drive to Baltimore was “gorge,” as my SIL would say, but things got a little sketchy as we headed into downtown. The Roommate and I shrugged our shoulders—we live in L.A., after all, we do sketchy all the time, and proceeded to park the rental car in a garage that was built like Fort Knox. Instead of a paper ticket, it gives you a magnetic coin on entry that you must wave in front a door in order to get back in from the street. Let’s just say we were frantically waving said coin in front of said door approximately thirty seconds after exiting it. Once we were walking around outside, we realized we stuck out like a couple of Positive Black Men at a biker rally (we were the only women, only tourists, and only recently-showered people in sight) and everyone was staring at us, including a jaded street cop who simply raised his eyebrows, as if to say “Hmmm…. this should be entertaining.”
Dave and Mary later informed me that the harbor where we had seen the live blue crabs was in Annapolis.
So we went to our second crabcake pick in Hanover, Maryland, also recommended by random users of the Internet, in whom we had lost all faith: Timbuktu’s. Again, there weren’t many women there, but this time it was because it was a lodge with man’s food and manly portions and dated manly wood paneling on the walls. The place was packed, and when we got our crabcakes, we knew why. They were huge, like softball-sized HUGE:
So huge, in fact, that we could not finish one apiece. So huge that we both got quite ill. So huge that, five hours later, when the Southwest flight attendant offered us roasted peanuts, we were insulted by her assumption that we would ever eat again. Yet the next day we traded emails wherein we both admitted we were totally ready for another one. Lucky for us, they ship nationwide.
Tuesday was finished off by flights, flights and more flights. We gained three hours, but they were all wasted on flying. By the time we finally arrived in Los Angeles late Tuesday night, we had recovered from our Timbuktu maladies and, for the millioneth time on our trip, found ourselves absolutely famished. Lucky for us, Tito’s is on the way home from the airport and is open 24 hours.
Maryland crabcakes for lunch and Tito’s tacos for dinner. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
(I know, I know: TWO pictures of food when I spent an entire day at the National Gallery? Look up your own Rembrandt pics. Mine turned out a little blurry.)
