I love Washington, DC. It was the destination for several demonstrations I attended, primarily in the 1970s.
In 1998, I took one of those on-and-off tour buses and visited several locations. I visited the Capitol and sat in the House gallery; I must have got permission from my Congressman. I also went to Arlington Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the then-new FDR Memorial.
On our trip on Tuesday, we took the DC Circulator from the Washington Monument, not far from the African American Museum of History and Culture. We also visited the Jefferson Memorial, which I had never visited. It was very striking.
The Wednesday sojourn involved waiting a while for the circulator. A really strange young man was on the lawn on his way toward the Washington Monument. He kept yelling into his megaphone, “You’re gonna burn.” He said “burn” a lot. City workers should quit their jobs. His flag had the 45th president embossed on it.
He seemed to leave for a time, but at some point, he returned, came over to the water fountain not very far from where we were sitting, and washed himself up, including his private parts.
We finally visited the MLK monument, which had not been created the last time I was in town. While I’d seen it on TV before, viewing it in person reminded me of its unfinished nature and the incomplete nature of justice. Then we walked to the FDR Memorial, which is more vast than I recalled.
Discontinued
The free DC Circulator is on the chopping block. “On Monday, July 29, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) announced the start of the planned phase-down of DC Circulator service, which will begin October 1, 2024, and culminate with service ending December 31, 2024. The program downsize and shutdown are part of the District Fiscal Year 2025 Budget and Financial Plan.
“As services wind down, DDOT is working with Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to determine service levels to help reduce the impact to the public. DC Circulator is operated by RATP Dev USA, and employees have been provided with written notification of the planned service closure.”
This is unfortunate. Although I must admit that it wasn’t reliable in terms of coming every 15 minutes, this could be a function of previous cutbacks.
Trying to go home
We stayed in Alexandria on Thursday and went to the waterfront on a local free trolley. It must have flooded often in this particular area near the Potomac, as it was that specific day, because people had sandbags already prepared and had them just in case.
We went to a nice restaurant called IndoChen. The waiter asked where he was from. Neither of us guessed Nepal.
On Friday, there were all sorts of weather watches in the DMV area (District of Columbia/Maryland/Virginia), including flash floods and tornado warnings for Alexandria at 8 a.m. caused by the very slow-moving Hurricane Debby. Eventually, the weather cleared, but our 11:10 a.m. Amtrak train to NYC became later and later, so even if we got to Penn Station, we’d miss the train to Albany. The big problem was debris, mostly trees, on the tracks.
Fortunately, an earlier delayed train out of Alexandria had shed enough passengers – they made other plans – and we got to NYC. We were in the Moynihan Station across from Penn Station, which was far enough from us that my wife and I couldn’t sit together. I listened to the loudest, most vapid person I ever heard on a train. And she was sitting BEHIND me, probably boring her seatmate half to death. And it was so foggy and rainy that I couldn’t even see the Hudson River, usually a treat on that leg of the trip.
Nevertheless, we got home only about a half hour behind schedule, very tired, but happy to have been able to fit two vacations in my wife’s time off.