STONE, MARBLE AND METAL (there's a large phallic symbol out my window)

We hit the road at 2:00 AM heading east toward sunrise; I like driving through the early morning darkness and counting the miles and hours.

We set out in the cold and I reset the Trip A on the odometer and start the coronagraph on my watch.

It's a quirky thing I have about timing things, I wouldn't call it an obsession, I just like to know how much of my life is spent doing something worthwhile as opposed to pissing it away on something not.

On a road trip I chop the journey up in 100 mile increments and 1 hour time blocks.

It's not like I stop the car and run around it three times every hundred miles; I'm not OCD, It just makes the drive in the middle of the night less tedious to me.

Little Sis thinks I'm crazy doing road trips and driving straight through on really long trips. This is only 600 miles, I can do that standing on my head.

The thing I enjoy about driving through the night is the solitude, the non-drivers are sleeping and I drive on through the night and watch for the tell-tell signs of daybreak. 

I'm not used to driving in the same direction as the rotation of our planet. As I drive I try to calculate how many miles east I will be by 6:30 AM knowing that it will make sunrise quite a bit earlier than we are used to Indy.

I'm driving Renee's Lexus so it's a nice comfortable ride and it's the University's gas so there's that.

There is a reception for the seminar in DC we want to attend, it's not till 6:00 PM but we wanted to get there as early as possible to do a few hours of sight seeing beforehand.

We arrived at the hotel one hour later then my best estimate due to sitting on the interstate in Maryland dead stopped for an hour. We go up to the room to check out our digs, it's an older hotel but the Washington Hilton is a very nice place. I pull back the curtain and look south, there it it! the Washington Monument! Right there almost within reach. Awesome!

I would find out, looks are deceiving in DC, it's a 2 mile walk to the White House and at least a half mile more to the Washington Monument.  

Although we arrived a little later than planned we still had plenty of time to explore so we strike out. Renee lived here for 5 years but that was 20 years ago; she said she loved her time here and she seemed to really enjoy coming back.

We are only 1/2 mile from the Metro at DuPont Circle but we press on by foot walking all the way to the South Lawn of the White House.

I didn't have any protest signs made up so we left the White House without incident and headed back on a bus. I was impressed with what I had seen of DC on this first day. No crack smoking whore mongering mayors seen so far, no drive-by shootings either. The DC I saw was clean and I loved the architecture of all the town houses and buildings, yeah I could live here for a spell, if I could afford it, I can't !

Attending the reception I was on my best behavior knowing I'm the least educated person in the room and this is a business setting. Whenever I'm out of my element I subscribe to the old adage, " it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak and remove all doubt."

These wise words have been attributed to both Twain and Lincoln among others; since I'm in DC I'll go ahead and give the homage to Lincoln. 

Although I enjoy the humor there is some sage advise there and I have seen many people in awkward settings who either did not know this saying or did not heed the sound advice.

I'll have to say the people I met and conversed with at the reception seemed to be really personable and it made for a very enjoyable night. 

The trick is to be sociable and listen more than you speak, also consume the never ending adult beverages without removing all doubt.