Washington DC

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Friday I woke up at 630 to call in sick, then slept til about eleven. Got up and finished packing, called around and found a cab for $24. My driver was a retired consultant who did something or another for auto dealers. Now he drives his cab when he feels like working and spends a lot of time golfing and such. We talked about golf and how the best way to start a new hobby is to take a lesson so you don't get into bad habits that you'll then have to get out of. I mentioned that I'd gotten into SCUBA recently and it turns out he'd been an instructor since like 1971! Cool! The airport was fine, but my flight was delayed an hour so I had a lot of time to kill, which I did reading my book about Judaism and also calling some people I hadn't talked to in a while. I had a chance to try out the $35 radio shack "noise cancelling" headphones, and while they don't cancel all noise, they certainly cut out a lot of the plane engine racket. I was actually impressed. When I got to Reagan Airport, Shelley was nowhere to be found but I was amazed by their high arching ceilings with crisscrossing steel beams. Cool. I saw Shelley but she didn't see me, so I crept up behind her and put my hand over her mouth and got her into a headlock with my other arm. Hee hee! It was good to see her again.
We rode to the George Washington University campus on the Metro, which was slightly different than Chicago's El in that you can't share fare cards and it costs a different amount depending on how far you travel. It was quite new and high tech, had signs saying how long it would be until the next train and such. Very cool. It was about 10-15 degrees warmer than it was in Chicago, so I was very comfortable. My first impression of the city was that there were a lot of recognizably named buildings, like The Red Cross headquarters, the State Department, and such, but few of them were of memorable architectural quality. We walked back to her apartment, got some food and booze on the way, and she pointed out that the Washington monument looks like a member of the KKK at night (it does). We stopped briefly at her apartment, then at her neighbors to warn them of impending loud music late into the night (her roommate Javier was having a Eurotrash themed 21st birthday party). We headed over to a pasta dinner for her rugby team but we were late so I ate some of those vanilla/vanilla oreos that are sooo good and they talked about rugby excitedly for a bit. We headed back to the party, which was by this point in full swing. Lots of dancing (they installed a stripper pole that Shelley's other roommate and travel buddy I also met in Mexico bought on ebay) lots of drinking, lots of people, a couple hookah's were fired up, I met a few people, danced a lot, felt awesome and then passed out cold sometime after 3am. First thing the next morning we had to get up and get to the vans to drive down to Richmond for rugby game. More on that later

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