Thought you all would like to know that Da Crabb made it safely to Washington - I met him at National Airport (also known as Reagan National Airport) at a little after 5 pm local time. He's already experienced his first DC rush-hour traffic jam while we were trying to make it out this way and he's also experienced The Tortilla Factory restaurant, a local fave . Now he's been safely deposited at his hotel, where I'm sure he's sawing logs this very minute and sleeping off the 1 hour time difference.
Sunday,
we did go to Washington Downtown to see the sights, then moved on to
Manassas to one of the battlefields. It was a very hot sunny day, got
into the 90s, and we both got sunburned. However, going on the
battlefields gives you a different prospective on how things were back in
the civil war. Basically, I was awestruck on how many people died on
these battlefields. The next day, we trucked up to Gettysburg PA, which
was more widespread than Manassas, with cannons all around the area.
On these hollowed grounds where both the confederates and the union
soldiers lost their lives, I was so overwhelmed by the amount of bullets
and shells and cannonballs that they have in the Gettysburg Museum.
The
CD store we visited on Friday is called Record And Tape Exchange, in
Fairfax VA. Here I got to see Da Crabb on a hardcore CD hunt,
and yes I did buy more CDs than he did (The Housemartins, The Beautiful
South, Bush). It's quite the cool shop, and it's really close by where
I work (dangerously so) and so I anticipate running up there frequently
on my breaks from work Note to the vinyl heads out there - they do have a ton of vinyl!
Ocean
City was great, and we were surprised to see how many people had
flocked to the boardwalk on an early spring day. It was very windy and
chilly down there, but it was all good. What Crabb actually said to me
when he heard the bluesman singing was "He does a better Robert Johnson
than Eric Clapton!"
Definitely
check out WRNR (103.1 FM) if you're ever in the Annapolis area. Their
signal only goes so far, and right around Easton MD we started to lose
it, but they play stuff you never hear on commercial radio. Some
examples are Freedy Johnston, Elastica, and Morphine. We definitely
enjoyed tuning in and turning on while we were driving back and forth to
the ocean
Crabb is right about the traffic around here
On the way to the shore we got stuck in traffic at an accident scene,
and then coming back from Ocean City on Saturday evening we found
ourselves stuck in a work zone on the Capital Beltway (I495) in Silver
Spring MD. Crabb also noticed how many cops were out there that
evening. The Maryland State Police were out in full force; I guess they
do selective enforcement on the weekend nights. In any event, there
were more cops out there than either of us had ever seen in quite a
while.
But
hey - if you need to fill up your car, and you're tired of high gas
prices in your area, head to Cambridge MD where the price for 87 octane
is $1.61 That's about 25 cents cheaper than the DC area prices.
We
did try to check out DC on Sunday, but that was a dumb move on my part -
you cannot find a parking space in DC on a Sunday to save your neck That's why we found ourselves at Arlington Cemetery - at least we could park there and see across the Memorial Bridge.
Manassas
Battlefield was definitely cool, and believe it or not that's the first
time I had ever been there - and I've lived in this area my whole life
It's very stark when compared to the Gettysburg Battlefield and all the
memorials they have there, but no less moving. Visiting the Civil War
battlefields is quite an experience, and it really makes you think about
all that happened only 140 years ago.
Coming
back from Gettysburg on Monday, I decided to drive us through West (by
God) Virginia so Crabb could say that he had been in 4 states and the
District Of Columbia during his stay here
We did try to get down to Harper's Ferry and check that all out, but
apparently you can't park right in the town anymore - you have to park
way far away and take a shuttle bus into town, so that didn't work out
so well. But we took the scenic route coming back here, on picturesque
Route 9 all up and down the mountains back into Virginia. Believe me,
there are some hair-raising switchbacks on that road
So that's my addendum. Thanks very much to Crabb for hopping a plane out here and visiting our fair area A great time was had by all!
The
worst traffic jams I have seen in years, on that was on a saturday nite
on Interstate 495. Surprise number one, I only visited one CD store,
and surprise number two Brooksie bought more CDs than I did! (homemade
CDs don't count there ).
Brooksie took me to all the finest food establishments in her area, and
of course, my fave was Fuddruckers, as well hitting the Red Robin on
the last nite I was there, The Red Robin Burger was so big, I couldn't
finish it. Prior before going to DC, I had to get my wisdom teeth
pulled since one of them shattered and the doc gave me some Oxycontin
which really screwed me up on the trip to Manassass. Never take Oxycontin on a empty stomach kiddies.
This trip was not about bargainhunts, it was more of a history lesson, and the last two days and the afternoon spent at Ocean City were the highlights of a five day trip, which went over very quickly.
Saturday, we then hit to the Ocean, to Ocean City. Ocean City is a cool place to spend the day, (unless its hurricane season which isn't). The boardwalk is alive with musicians with their karaoke machines to which they play their instruments. We had a Herb Alpert wannabe, with karaoke accomplishment, a violist with Karoke Backing, and a bluesman, whose version of Love In Vain is more believable than Eric Clapton's latest. Hay look, Brooskie, he's better than EC, at least its the blues. Later on, i went to go feed the seagulls and ended up getting a shoeful of ocean (ewwww), and believe it, the ocean is very salty.
PS: The Blog was written in pieces so I tried to attempt to recreate things as they happened via postings on the old My Space site. The big spaces between paragraphs were like that in the original blog, pictures were added today from the archives. One missing picture was me feeding the seagulls by the ocean. Kinda spooky to see them hovering around me for a moldy old piece of bread. But it was still a good time.
