2021 ConnectiCOUCH Part 2: DC, Baltimore, and a taste of New Jersey

[theinfamousj]

... And then it was morning. Tuesday.

I was summoned from slumber by my alarm that I'd forgotten to silence on my phone. It was waking me for the work I didn't have to attend. Luckily, it woke only me as Significant Other was sleeping on a different surface, the couches being only single-wide and all.

I snuck past my host and into the ensuite (and only) bathroom in the apartment. He didn't stir. Good! I made my morning ablutions and then returned to the living room, determined to use this extra morning time to unpack the latest technology in my arsenal, a GPD P2Max ultrabook, and hopefully convert it to dual-boot with Linux. I'd been promised that Ultrabook's battery lasted 10 hours with Linux, you see. Long story short, it was all going swimmingly until the part where I realized that all the flash drives I brought with me were too small in capacity for the Linux operating system so I made a mental note to pick up a larger flash drive ASAP on the trip; at least Ultrabook was charged!



It was about this time that the Significant Other woke up and we had a brief exchange about how to visit the loo and he, too, was able to successfully debrief his intestines without waking our host. I said that I wanted to wait until 8:30 am before leaving in hopes of giving our host a chance to wake so we could have a goodbye ritual, so Significant Other puttered around gathering our borrowed sleeping things and folding them for easy return to their storage spaces; I continued work on the Linux dual-boot I'd described above.

8:30 am rolled around and Mr. Antsy could be contained no longer so out the door we must go. And so we quietly departed as our host continued to slumber. I would have left a note, but the scrap notepad I keep in my purse had been exhausted and I'd forgotten to refill it; oops.

Our first stop after that was to continue my beloved traveling tradition: exchanging books in a little library. For DC, I'd brought a 5-story sampler Disney Princess children's book as given by the children I work with (and with the blessing of their parents who found that they could not read those stories a million times without homicide).

Significant Other had magically located an official Little Free Library within walking distance of our host's home; it was on the Little Free Library's website and register but not on Google Maps. I lack the capacity to locate myself in foreign places on the Little Free Library's website's map to figure out what Little Free Library is closest so prefer to add them to Google Maps as well. And so I did, after putting my book in the library. I could have exchanged it for a different book, but that library seemed in need of material and so I simply left a book without taking a book; sometimes it is easy to do a good deed. After all, I had another book for later and could actually trade that one for something to read.

From there, we walked through the slowly awakening neighborhood of Columbia Heights to the nearest DC Circulator bus stop which we'd then take to The Smithsonian stop. As we rode, I learned that while the DC Circulator was gratis for our trip, they did plan to resume charging fares. I found this interesting because most of my travels have such Circulator routes and they are always gratis due to moving tourists around to areas in want of those sweet, sweet tourism dollars; in exchange the areas now in possession of those sweet, sweet tourism dollars cover the budget of the Circulator routes. And if not tourists, then party animals looking to bar hop. But not so in DC, apparently. Also, there wasn't just one single looping Circulator route, but several Circulators which again altogether confused me since my understanding of the purpose of a Circulator was limited to the above. Still, I appreciated that the bus picked up in a neighborhood with zero tourism value and no bars to speak of to take us to tourism targets.

For those wondering about COVID safety, masks were required on all WMTA modes of transit and everyone riding was in full compliance. (something I'd be fondly reminiscent about later in the week) DC was taking COVID seriously.

We alighted from the bus at The US Justice Department, just down the block from The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. We walked up to it and perched on its concrete fence in some shade to eat our breakfast which consisted of pop tarts for the Significant Other and Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes for myself, all washed down with water from our water jars. While sitting and waiting for the museum's opening hours (only 15 minutes from our arrival), I happened to espy a sign which said that this museum's opening hours did not include Tuesdays. Doh! Time for a Plan B!

The Significant Other quickly hopped on his phone to research other open museums that didn't require advanced ticketing or timed entry since we'd failed to meet that "advanced" criteria. National Portrait Gallery? Closed on Tuesdays. The National Postal Museum (my favorite Smithsonian, BTW, so you should go if you ever get a chance)? Entirely shuttered due to COVID. The United States Botanic Gardens were open, but only the outside bits due to COVID concerns, and it was the indoors that I really wanted to attend as air conditioning was my friend and the day was already quite hot. And so it went.

My plan was to simply point my feet in the direction of some governmental things and see what we could access. I was okay with a tourists's view of the US Supreme Court or perhaps another trip to the US Mint. But, just as I was proposing that, the Significant Other found that The Smithsonian Museum of American History was both open on a Tuesday and had no advanced ticketing requirements. And so, gathering our breakfast refuse, we pointed our feet in that direction and walked over.

It was somewhere along this walk that I realized that I'd opened my Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes with a tiny pair of scissors built in to my tiny Swiss Army knife (a gift from my good friend Heather; shout out!). I knew that Smithsonians have a zero tolerance policy for knives of any size, even if they are smaller than a pinkie; I'd lost a previous knife of not even an inch in blade at The Holocaust Museum. After having to go through a very public and frenetic process or reading a statement of peaceful intent and surrendering it for destruction with that knife - it had been a resident in one of those Swiss Army cards I kept in my wallet mostly as a bottle opener - I wasn't keen to lose this tiny treasure that was actually incredibly useful. The Significant Other offered to hide it in a plant for me, which he did.

We got to the Museum of American History just as the doors opened, knife hidden, and passed through security without issue. Well, there was one issue; security was confused about my empty water jar. I can see the point: Who brings an empty pasta sauce jar with them into a museum? But once I'd explained what its purpose was, the security guy thought it was pretty brilliant as a water container that, should I lose, I wouldn't be upset about; he even pointed me to a water bottle filler. By the way, gentle reader, the American History Smithsonian has a water bottle filler.

I will note, gentle reader, you are now also not allowed to have scissors. So do consider hiding your thread nippers.

And then we were in. The Significant Other wanted to see The Bat-mobile and The Ruby Slippers. Being less starstruck, I wanted to see ... I didn't know what, actually. We first tried to check our heavy backpacks in to the lockers, but found that they were closed for COVID. I'm not really sure what lockers and COVID have to do with one another, but I respect the Smithsonian for taking a stand.

Backpacks on, we approached the Information Desk to learn that The Bat-mobile had been removed from display and that the Ruby Slippers display was under construction. Thus, a disheartened Significant Other joined me, who had just noticed a train wing and was all aboard that exhibit.

On the way there, we discovered another exhibit in an alcove devoted to the changing relationship of Americans to our food. The Significant Other brightened: this was the recreation of Julia Child's kitchen from the Julie and Julia movie!



Image Description: A partial view of the recreation of Julia Child's kitchen from the Americans and Food exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Apparently, in the movie, the Julie character leaves a pound of butter on the table of this recreated kitchen. In reality, the recreated kitchen was more closely guarded than the Lincoln Memorial, so there is no chance of getting butter - or anything else - into the exhibit.

While this kitchen was his favorite part of the exhibit, mine was seeing all the tools used to process various whole foods in times of old, and then the coffee-on-the-go portion which showed all the different coffee go-cups. I saw one from McDonalds that my family had when I was a youngling, complete with the sticky catch for the bottom rim of the coffee goblet which would stick to a dashboard and allow the goblet to dock in it, not terribly unlike a car-holder for a popsocket phone.

From there, we finally go to do my choo choo of my choosing which turned out to be about every form of transportation there was and included human movement for migration as well. Salisbury, NC, featured in the exhibit because of its rail repair yard; shoutout to my state! We discovered that if you are a significant enough donor to The Smithsonian, you get to have your immigration story featured in this exhibit. We also, further, discovered, that despite the Loving Decision, there was a different lawsuit from a white man (union leader; so he's no stranger to raising a fuss) who wanted to marry his California-born lady-love who happened to be visually Japanese and was rejected for legal wedlock in Nevada due to the anti-miscegenation laws of the time. He sued, and he won.

From there we ventured to the under-construction Ruby Slippers exhibit which was, literally, the pair of the Ruby Slippers on a plinth and under glass, surrounded by posters that told the tale of its conservation. I found the posters more interesting than the slippers, but the Significant Other felt otherwise.

At that point I was feeling overstimulated. The entire curation of this museum was full of exclamation points!!!!! and bold fonts and bright colors to try to sell you on attending any one of the many disparately themed halls with no central organization. Even the signs to get you to not litter were highlighter green with bold font and several interrobangs. It's a lot.

Luckily, on the same floor that had the Ruby Slippers, there were also two, identical, sensory rooms which had gentle massage music, low lighting, power stations for recharging phones, cushy seating, and - to justify their existence - television screens showing clips of recorded gameplay from video games in The Smithsonian's collection. I never thought I'd turn to Borderlands for a calm peaceful moment, but here I was.

After a peaceful respite while we saw cutscenes of a post apocalyptic Washington DC from the perspective of someone looking out the exact window we were next to, we left the glorious air-conditioning of the museum to trek to McDonald's to pick up our lunch; the Significant Other had a coupon. Being COVID cautious, I'd required that all eating be done al fresco.

But first, we stopped by our co-conspirator plant and retrieved my Swiss Army knife, safe and sound it was. I rate hiding your weaponry in a plant, highly.

On the way to McDonalds, we passed some sprinklers tossing our taxpayer supported money onto the lawn. The Significant Other took the opportunity to fight the heat somewhat by cavorting through the sprinklers and dousing his bandana in sprinkler water. I, too, had a bandana but was being stubborn about wetting it.

Right as we had crossed the US Customs building, two Secret Service lights-and-sirens cars blocked off the street we were next to and men with semiautomatic weapons jumped out and commanded all of us to stay in place. The star-struck Significant Other immediately pulled out his camera to capture what he hoped to be a presidential motorcade.

I, also, pulled out my phone to text my friend in Baltimore and see what the plans were for seeing her; I'm not particularly star struck. A local who had a hand-truck full of boxes that was also stuck in place remarked that it was likely to be some lower-level cabinet member headed through. And what rolled through? An empty town-car, flanked by black-painted cargo vans.

After that, McDonalds and then looking for a nice bench to sit on to eat said McDonalds food. But, of course, being a major city in the USA and away from the tourist areas, the city planning did not include such seating elements out of a desire to be inhospitable to the unhoused - which is interesting as all the parks we'd passed had tents erected in them not dissimilarly to Los Angeles - so surely the city planners could see that their intended outcome was unobtainable and maybe benches could be instituted. As it was, we ended up sitting on a large window ledge of a building under renovation, receiving perplexed looks from passersby as we people-watched.

After eating our reduced-price lunch and gathering our garbage which we deposited in a conveniently located public trashcan (it was right next to our perch), we then headed back to the Prius and rolled out of DC by way of a drive around the US Marine Corps War Memorial.

It was at this point that our DC host woke up and noticed we were gone and asked after us, so I was able to tell him all that had transpired and once again thank him for his hospitality.

And so, we headed to Baltimore to meet my Baltimore-friend. On the way, we discovered we were likely to be early so popped in to the BWI Ikea for another free tea via Family Card and air-conditioning. So for those counting, we are now at two Ikeas and two days of road trip.

After that, we showed up in Baltimore and found our way to the grocery store closest to my friend's house who happened to be having a farmer's market across the street which was doing brisk sales in ice cream. Instead, I bought a very intense tasting kombucha from what will now eclipse Tribucha as my favorite kombucha brewer: Tortuga Kombucha. It was delicious but is not for the weak of palette.

After that, we parked in front of my Baltimore-friend's house right as thunder threatened. We made it in her front door right as the heavens opened. And it rained and rained as we cooked pizzas from scratch, charged our electronics in anticipation of a Motel Prius stay, and the Significant Other caught a nap. Then we went to eat outside under the drippy branches of the Mother Tree in her backyard.

Stuffed and full of social happiness, we once again hit the road to our parking spot for Motel Prius for the night. On the way, we hit up one final rest area where we did our night time ablutions and toileting, and I took the opportunity to convert the Prius to Motel Prius mode, including dropping the back seat, laying out the sleeping pads, and the sleeping bags. Less than an hour later, we were parking in our parking spot.

In conjunction with the advice given on the Motel Prius website, we chose to park in a nature preserve at a trail head. It didn't specifically say that we could park overnight but it also didn't specifically say we couldn't. However, out of an abundance of caution, the Significant Other decided not to use the climate control features of Motel Prius and so we, instead, used the car door window-screens and the cross-breeze created by lowering both back-seat windows.

I took a Zyrtec to counteract any allergies that might decide to take advantage of the woodland sleeping, and to the very loud sounds of bugs, we drifted off to sleep. ( >)

Frugal Budget Check

• Overnight lodging - Free
• Bus Fares - Free (limited time)
• Breakfast - Free (brought with)
• Museum Admission - Free
• Lunch - $6 (coupon)
• Prius - $57/day
• Parking - $10/day
• Ikea Tea - Free
• Ikea Meatballs - $3
• Kombucha - $6
• Dinner - Free (thanks Baltimore-friend! you know we'll feed you when you come to us!)
• Motel Prius - Free
• Gas - 1 tank $30

Total $112

Obviously the bulk of our budget is the car and food, but hey, that's to be expected.