April 03, 2003 - 10:07 p.m.
Many times in the past my mother has wistfully mentioned that one day she'd like to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom in DC. So yesterday, driving back from a minor shopping trip with the boys, I called her on my cell phone. The warm weather recently has pushed the blooms to peak and, with rain coming in for the weekend, it was now or next year.
Mom just got back from visiting my sister in LA on Sunday and a trip to Falmouth and back on Monday to take my Grandmother to her cardiologist, so why not drive to DC and round out the week seeing the rest of the family?
Seizing this insane opportunity, she agreed to come and I began to make the event's plans. Having yet to experience my first trip on the Metro, I decided to postpone it until a time I was unaccompanied by my aging parents, a preschooler, and an infant. Yeah - I thought it would be much easier to drive into DC.
You can stop laughing now.
foxphotog thought I was a bit off my rocker, too.
"Have you ever driven in DC?" he asked.
"Well, not exactly. Mike was driving. But it can't be that bad."
(silence)
"OK," I amended. "It can't be as bad as New York City."
" ... It's about the same."
Yeah - except I doubt there are as many tourists behind the wheel in NYC. I had to make one or two aggressive maneuvers, particularly in leaving (and I'll get to that in a minute) but I did these guilt free as I watched the other wackos around me trying to get around.
FoxPhotog gave me excellent directions to the Tidal Basin - not only which streets would put me on the most direct route, but when to change lanes and what to look out for. Getting there was no problem. Parking shouldn't have been a problem. But there were those boneheaded tourists again...
Imagine this - The cherry trees are planted around the circular Tidal Basin, where the Jefferson Memorial is located. Independence Ave. runs along one side of it, following the curved of the basin's shore. Between it and the water is a crescent shaped parking lot that connects at the top and bottom of the curve of Independence - one lane, one way, with parking spaces along both sides. You enter at the bottom and exit at the top.
The entire right lane of Independence was backed up with traffic waiting to get into that parking lot. As we sat there, I tried to guess what the hold up could be. From the road I could clearly see between 6-8 open parking spaces and very few cars driving through the lot. I could not see the entrance to the lot, so I assumed something was going on there that was backing up everything.
Eventually enough cars moved ahead (or just quit waiting) for me to pull close enough to see the moron sitting in his car at the entrance of the lot, waiting for someone to get into their car and leave so he could take that space. (Yes, I could still spot open spaces from the road.) Once someone obliged him, we continued to creep slowly forward. Then the Massachusetts Jeep tried to cut in line...
She pulled to the front of the line, stopped dead in the middle lane of traffic, and turned on her right blinker. And everyone in the right lane suddenly edged up to the bumper of the car in front of them. After a few cars refused to let her butt in she thought she might force her way into line. The Expedition in front of me gunned over the curb to cut her off and succeeded in wedging her into a position from which she could not go back (reversing into oncoming traffic) and could not easily get into the parking lot unless some kind soul allowed her the space to do so.
And your friendly neighborhood BookGirl... had been sitting in the car a half an hour with failing air conditioning and two children anxious to get out of their car seats. Had she asked, I would have told her to go to the back of the line.
We had to wait for two more people to shark parking spaces before driving to the end of the lot and taking our pick of the plethora of spaces down there.
Zachary had eyes only for the paddle boats. My mother took pictures of everything. Dad wanted to talk about the trees and other horticultural things, but keeping up with Zachary took all his attention. Marcus just watched us all. The cherry trees were lovely. The sun was shining. It was quite a bit warmer than the weather forecast of 73 degrees, but all in all a beautiful day.
After 20 minutes, we'd seen the elephant and, as I neglected to put sunscreen on my babies before leaving home, I didn't want the boys out in the sun too long. So we packed everyone back into the car, held up traffic as the next car coming in waited for our space, and headed for home...
...And that is when I realized my mistake. FoxPhotog had given me detailed directions for getting to the Tidal Basin. I had never asked for the same to get back to 66.
Ah, say you, how difficult can it be to find a major highway?
In DC - damn difficult. Particularly when most of the directional signs you need are posted 1)past the point at which you can do anything about being in the correct lane (or street) and/or 2)behind a tree. After three attempts, I finally lucked into being in the correct lane at the right time and got the hell out of Washington DC.
I still want to take the boys to the Smithsonian, but I think I'll wait for a dark and drizzly day next time.
