Laura, her mother and I made our annual trek down to Washington D.C. to visit her sister and her family. The ride down was nice the leaves were changing color. At the halfway mark on the Pennsylvania turnpike is a town called Breezewood. That has every fast food restaurant known to man. Since Laura was driving and I was sleeping I awoke right before hitting this fast food Mecca. And I started chanting – ‘ARBYS, WENDY’S, MCDONALDS’ and continued this litany of restaurants all the way through town. We already agreed to stop past this town at a small rest stop. We already discussed the downside of eating big on the road and that is falling asleep at the wheel. So there was no disagreement about not eating at Breezewood. At the rest stop we went to bathroom and I took a picture of a cemetery in the hills behind where we were parked. Laura and her mother had yogurts at the picnic table at the stop. And I bought a bag of chips in a vending machine. I found that just chanting the names of all the fast food restaurants is almost as fun as eating there. Laura does not agree on that matter with me. Probably because I was yelling in her ear for 5 minutes. Anyhow almost two hours later we arrived. And right away I was playing soccer with my niece and nephew. After sitting on my ass for over four hours this felt good. Later in the day Laura and I took their new dog, a Labrador, for a walk to where horses live. And two of the horses ran across the field where they were grazing and checked us out. The dog just sat down and looked at the horses like Buddha. We were all sort of mesmerized with each other on the cool crisp fall sunny day. I thought maybe the horses expected us to give them something to eat. Labradors are the friendliest dogs. I haven’t met a dog yet that does not love to run… That night we went out to eat at their favorite restaurant. We all had pasta. From the portions lasagna looked like the best deal. I had the pasta combo which consisted of stuffed shells with manicotti, little creamed gnocci’s and veal raviolis covered with marinara sauce. Laura’s mother and our nephew split a spaghetti and meat balls. My niece got a child’s portion of spaghetti. We all split a bottle of Chianti red wine. Laura had a tilapia fish and pasta special. Since we were all stuffed at the end of the meal, I only ordered one cannoli and passed it around the table and everyone took a bite for desert.
The next day Laura and I drove into the Capital and met all the other rollerbladers in front of the White House. We skated around, warming up, checking out all the protesters from around the world. I read the placards from the woman who was from Tibet. There are usually two skates, one intermediate and another advanced skate. But since the woman who leads the intermediate skate did not show up, we all skated the same skate, which turned out to be around twenty-four miles. We skated Downtown for a while then out by the Potomac River. Then we crossed over the Potomac River via one of those concrete bridges. It was a cold day, early, and by afternoon, I was overdressed and was losing a lot of water. First I took off my hooded sweatshirt. And tied it around my waist. Then I took off my long sleeve shirt. When I got down to my Greenfield Glide t-shirt I had already lost too much water. The banana and Gatorade that Laura and I split did not help my famished situation. I was o.k. the first 15 miles but those clothes took too much water out of me. We were doing a lot of hills. I was way behind everybody because I was in no hurry and I was carrying a small camera. I even got a picture of the other skater carrying a camera. I took a shot of him taking a picture of the group at one of our rest stops. At one point when we were skating through a Mexican enclave in Arlington, one guy yelled out ‘amigo’ to me and I responded with a flurry of Spanish. Usually. With my mustache and dark hair I can pass for Spanish descent. There were El Salvadorian and Honduran restaurants in this area. One guy had to listen to my litany of the Congo River when we stopped to check out the Potomac from a hillside view. He asked me quite frankly ‘Why did you take a canoe down the Congo?’ I told him some other guy organized the whole thing. I was just a tourist along for the ride, even though we were almost killed. My brother had told me that he was talking to an assistant director of the Peace Corps and he said they just lost three volunteers in the Zambezi River. I know that river has rapids. He also told me that the Peace Corps loses ten volunteers a year to illness and accidents. And wouldn’t you know, this day I would have an accident. I never fall when I rollerblade. Usually there are a lot of close calls. But this day, I was trying to make up time going down a big hill. And I did not use any brake. On the bend at the bottom of the hill some lady was coming out of a red light and I was going too fast to stop. So I slid down sideways to stop but I still ended up sliding in front of her car .And I saw that bumper coming right up to my head. She slammed on the brakes and once again in my life I almost bit the dust for good. I picked myself off of the pavement and had a huge strawberry bruise on my bare left arm and another one on the side of my left leg and buttocks. The scrape on my leg was not as deep as my arm because my pants added protection. If I recall correctly from my human physiology class that I took years ago, I think we have more pain receptors on the inside of our arms than on the outside of our thighs. Anyhow, after we started skating again I told the first Pearson that skated past me that I got my adrenalin rush for the year. I waddled back the last couple of miles to the White House where our car was parked. Laura was pissed and I heard her tell the skate leader that this skate was too long. Now looking back on it, I was just over-dressed for the weather. And the temperature was going up as we skated. Once again we were skating over the Potomac River and there was a sailing club with about 50 sailboats on the water. That is one wide river. It was quite a site watching the jets taking off from their Reagan International Airport that was right next to the river. And the horizon mixed all those sailboats into the scenery. It was a Kodak moment and I took a couple of pictures. Then when we got to the end of the bridge I also took a couple of pictures of the homeless homestead that somebody made under the bridge. A new environment really makes for photographic moments. When we arrived back we bid farewell to everybody then headed to the Indian museum to go to the bathroom. The paintings in this place are awesome. I could have stayed there the rest of the day but we were starving. We tried to make it to a café that we went to last year but the hot dog cart on the corner looked too good. So we bought a couple dogs and ginger ales and sat on the curb chowing down. I can’t remember anything in my life tasting as good as that hot dog with sauerkraut. I tipped the Mexican vender five bucks. Hell, I had just almost died, money had no meaning to me at that moment. After eating we drove up to the Adams Morgan section of town and got out and walked around. There are restaurants from all over the world at Adams Morgan. Three Ethiopian restaurants are real close together in this section of town. I’ve always wanted to try the millet bread that they use to rest the food. They put meat and vegetable dishes on top of this brown spongy bread that looks kind of like a dishrag. Why there are so many Ethiopian restaurants on this block? – I don’t know. One day I will eat in one of them. Later we drove back out of town and we ate the chicken we brought down from Pittsburgh. We bought it at Wal-Mart and Laura thinks that they inject it with some kind of flavoring to make it taste better. I’m not so sure it tasted just like chicken to me. What a simple meal we had, chicken, salad, corn and bread …