D.C. Deux

by Shannon


Basically a photo dump from Day 2 in D.C. I spent the first couple days in seminars, eating free food and schmoozing, so this post is just the guys, perdy much.

DAY 1

The view from our hotel room. You can see the Washington Monument off on the left,
in scaffolding due to earthquake damage. 

While I wasted away in seminars, Ryan and Cruncher walked to the
Capitol Building, and then off to the Newseum. 

The view from the Newseum balcony (Canandian embassy on the one side, Pennsylvania Avenue in front).

Ryan TOOK PHOTOS in the bathroom because he got a kick out of real (goofy) newspaper headlines on tile. SO HE TOOK PICTURES. WITH A CAMERA. IN THE BATHROOM. Weirdo. 

Some stinkin' cute kid on TV.

TV broadcast antenna from Ground Zero.

Unabomer's cabin. Yeah.

Top down: part of the Berlin wall, looking up into Checkpoint Charlie,
sign at Checkpoint Charlie, view of Checkpoint Charlie.

This picture warrants a story, not a caption. Those are Cruncher's shorts. And the pocket of Cruncher's short's. When I met Ryan and Cruncher in the hotel room after seminars, eating free food and schmoozing on Day 1, I was told a jaw-dropping story about how my son almost perished on one of those three-story Metro escalators. One second, he's standing there like a good 5-year-old. And then the next, Ryan is ripping my screaming son off of the moving death-stairs, which ate the pocket right off his cargo shorts. After filling out an incident report with the perplexed Metro workers (Cruncher escaped with only scrapes on his ankle), then Ryan almost died/lost Cruncher when the Metro doors slammed shut on Ryan's forearm — with Ryan standing on the platform while holding Cruncher's hand, who was inside the Metro train. Two strangers helped Ryan pry open the doors so he could jump on before losing our son for eternity. Sigh.... Cruncher eased my worries by saying not only did Daddy handle all of these tragedies remarkably well, but Cruncher was also relieved I wasn't there. What a thoughtful boy.  Moving on.

Crazy-long escalators. You'd think a small child would be fearful of escalators after such an incident,
but he seems to love them even more. He lived to tell the tale, I guess. 

Churchkey, where we met one of Ryan's Internet beer friends for dinner.
And beer. Duh. We ran/walked through the rain for about 15 blocks to get there.
Luckily, the food was tasty. We caught a cab back to the hotel, and the fare wasn't
much more than Metro tickets for all three of us. I was pretty tense the whole
eight-minutes cab ride, though, since it was Cruncher's first car ride
without a carseat or booster. Okay. I was a wreck. We all slept well that night.