May 23 – 28, Days 180 – 185 Topless in DC

Oh yeah! That got your attention. Now you know why we haven’t been blogging. Seriously, our bimini top has been something less than water impermeable and we’ve been watching little gaps of light getting ever bigger on the seams (I think that happens when you cruise at 25). At the same time, N has become increasingly frustrated he “cheaped out” and didn’t get the front plastic windows re-done during the last canvas job so we decided to get some work done while we were in DC. In another “technology is amazing story”, N googled canvas repair guys in DC while we powered up the Potomac, found one, scheduled him to meet us at the dock and had the project underway while we enjoyed DC.

We haven’t seen the boat without a top since we shipped it to Pittsburgh. Seems weird.

DC was the ONLY stop we pre-planned on this entire journey. We’d booked a spot at the Washington National marina last October to be sure we had a berth. Believe it or not we had our little Bayliner tied up where Carly Fiorina and her husband normally dock their 60’er.

Blow up this shot to see our boat at lower right. Seems like we only had rain and clouds all week!

Helicopters like this roared up the river every few hours. Not sure why, but cool to watch.

I kid you not! The marina was really not that fancy, but we were in the shadow of the Washington Monument and an easy walk to everything.

This turtle seemed to be on this log at this spot every morning. At least he wasn’t mooching power.

So it wasn’t Seattle’s Pike Place Market, but this fish market was two minutes from the marina and they cooked the stuff you bought on the spot!

N gets his seafood on.

The Jefferson Memorial. All of this stuff was within an easy walk from the boat.

B insists on having Z in every shot!

Some will remember how controversial the Vietnam War Memorial design was when it was first installed, but it is an unbelievably powerful monument.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours! Apparently we agreed to swap deactivated ICBM’s as part of the SALT Treaty so here we have a Russian missile on the left and a US missile on the right. The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum was awesome!

How about this? Edith and Archie’s chairs from All in the Family! There was so much random cool stuff at the Smithsonian. You can easily spend days going through the various buildings.

Lest you think it was all fun and games, N and Kaj went to a Congressional Hearing just to do it. Session was as unimpressive as N imagined it might be!

The Supreme Court building seemed to have the most gravitas in DC. Just amazing to look at the edifice from the street.

 

We also had fun meeting up with Nick’s friend Kirk (from college days!) and his wife Lisa. Amazing how many old friends you can find nearby when traveling 6,500 miles.

 

Of course, the BIG reason to come to DC was to attend son Kaj’s graduation from graduate school at Johns Hopkins SAIS (school of advanced international studies).

N and B celebrate with Kaj together with his friend Paola, our daughter Kyra and her friend Kamil.

Kaj will be starting a job in Shanghai later this month so it was good to spend some time with him over this past week.

N and B having fun hanging out with Kaj and Paola. We had lunch at this place that hosted George and Martha Washington together with Jefferson’s inaugural party!

We went to watch the Mariner’s play the Nationals. They played the full nine innings, but we got rained out at the end of three and retired to a brew pub! Oh… the Mariner’s lost 10-1!!!

We were all “museumed” out so took Kaj and Paola out for lunch on the boat. Cute couple!

Kaj and Paola came down to see us off after our week in DC. N’s new objective is to get a picture with B that does not include Z!

The parting shot as we leave DC to continue our journey.

After leaving DC in a blaze of glory N became concerned over oil pressure so we made a mid channel filter adjustment then powered on up the Potomac and made the turn North on the Chesapeake.

OK, so there wasn’t much boating this past week so we went with pics. We’ll go back to more narrative as the journey continues. From this point forward we have no dates to hit or places to get to so your guess is as good as ours where we might end up each day!

Last pic…. very proud… our trip pales in comparison!