For 5 days from the 17th until this morning, the 21,  we have been camped “dry” at the Greenbelt National Park, 18 miles from the White House.  It has been a bucolic and peaceful stay and very inexpensive, only $8.00/day for seniors. It has encouraged us to seek other National Parks for the coming days.  Where to spend those coming days seems to be evolving around map studies of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachians of Virginia and Tennessee.

This area is a total mystery to me but the Americana historic iconography of the Eastern First Peoples with names impossible to pronounce and the mining and the music with old roots from Scotland has always interested me.  I’m not much of a Civil War buff but given the right presentation it still intrigues me.  It’s all living history here.  History that was critical in our nations formation.  For this reason I am very anxious to visit the Smithsonian museums in DC.  Something we hope to do tomorrow or the next day.

Marine 1 rounding the Washington Monument

Thus far the park’s peace and quiet mornings and evenings have been broken by the daily travel outside its boundaries as we visit places.  Every day on our drives we have been lost.  Sometimes terribly and several times almost ruinously close to death by auto.  How so?  As you might recall from my blogs about Montreal and Toronto regarding the French drivers, well  the DC drivers are about split between courteous and being abjectly rude.   Of course the slower moving airstream brings out the impatience in the latter drivers.  But as a generalization the road systems being as numerous and as old as they are it has been very easy to be shunted off and lost in the maze.  Perhaps it can be compared to Los Angeles except it covers almost 100 times more area!  Directional signs  tend to be worn and staked one in front of another or placed just beyond where you were supposed to have turned.  

Perhaps some of this can be attributed to a slowing down of my reflexes.  I no longer motorcycle at night and my driving  is no longer enjoyable when darkness surrounds me and headlights blind.  

Marine 1 landing on White House lawn

I need to make a serious and encompassing attitude adjustment.  This screaming and bemoaning at the insanity and incompetence of other drivers, highway and signage engineers is having a marked and deleterious effect on my health.  This rage  is just not worth occupying even a fraction of my consciousness or another minute of my life.  Still the effort required to resist railing at the ever increasing incident, as the driving population balloons,  is stressful in of itself.

White House as seen from Washington Monument

Road trips.  Road trips mean dealing with it all on a daily basis and even on a per mile basis.  It’s crazy out there.  I have noticed  a steady deterioration in roads, manners and skills in direct relation to the increase in the number of drivers.  I recall trips in the late 50’s on route 66 from east to west with my family.  My dad could refer to everyman as “Mac” with a smile given and a smile received.  Maps were free at service stations and waitresses could smile at you in those desert cafes and make you feel older than your 15 years. 

Lincoln Memorial

Then there were the road trips in the early 60’s to Mount Rainier in the old VW bug where, as impoverished students with little for food and usually running on fumes had to coast down the mountain for miles in a pea soup thick fog with the door open  and head hanging  out, face close to the surface to see the centerline  and not meet another oncoming car!  The empty road is such an anomaly today that its occurrence causes one to look behind to make sure you are in fact the only one on the road.  If alone a shiver runs through you as you feel as if all you survey belongs to you.  Of course this still happens in isolated rural locations.  I felt it often  in New Zealand only 4 years ago.

Today, it is gone.  We need to deal with it.  But recently it has led me to wonder if traveling across America in an Airstream is capable of imparting that sense of exploration anymore?   The respite in the park was certainly delightful but one could not remain in there.  Is it truly lost?   That sense of exploration   used to be easy for me to find on my solo motorcycle travels through the western regions but today groups of bikers are the rule. Harley Davidson’s with cacophonous mufflers assaulting the public is not only offensive but desirous on the part of these bikers,  typically in groups of up to 15-20 riders.  It does not feel that they do this in the spirit of camaraderie but rather in the spirit of the mob as if afraid to be an individual.  There is group security in the American male penchant for loudness - listen to me, look at me.   It is rare to see the single biker today.  We are uncomfortable to be alone,  to be by ourselves.  So we no longer  experience the quiet.   We cannot walk into a room without turning on the TV or radio or computer or phone.  We are nervous if we are not doing anything.  Something must be wrong, we are wasting time,  wasting life if we are still.  Oh man is indeed a social animal I understand this but as we build to fill in the natural spaces and even the spaces in the ether and the internet, jammed beyond belief,  we insulate ourselves more and more from ourselves.  

Abe and Tony

This is why poetry is so important for the spaces it creates.  We have so little space left.

That which takes time to do right, craft, actually gives us space by suspending time,  the time needed to become involved with ones own creativity.  The creative act creates its own space around itself in order to come into being.

After the 5th day in Greenbelt Park our trailer batteries ran low.  Even with the trailer harness connected to the truck and an hour and a half of the motor running the batteries were still too week to keep the fridge going so we pulled up stakes and headed to a park with full hook ups.  It was nice to fire up the AC since the day was muggy and in the high 80s low 90s.  It’s  thunder and lightning in the forecast for tonight.

Viet Nam War Memorial

We visited Joe’s uncle Jack one day and had a delightful time.  He’s in his late 80s and regaled us with the history of his family.  He and I talked cars, especially about Morgans and Jags which I had owned and the Austin Healeys he had owned.  His wife never wanted the top down.  We also went over his collection of metal and enamel auto club badges.  I had never seen a collection before and found the designs to be very indicative of the countries they were from.  And we drank too much scotch and talked of the pet dogs that graced our lives.  He had 5 buried in his small back yard.  He wants his ashes to be spread in his back yard and a small plaque, which he showed me, to also be buried about three feet under,  the future owner never to know.  Bethesda, his last stop.  Frere  Jaques, a bien tot.

The next day we visited DC .  I have been thinking about this for may years and 

JoAnn and Uncle Jack on Bethesda

even shaved for the occasion.  Gotta look spruced for our country’s  capitol right?  Who knows who’s party we might be able to crash!  Jo and I limited this day to just walking the mall from Lincoln’s memorial to the VietNam memorial, Washington’s monument and White House.  

DC is a hard surface town.  There is Granite everywhere.  Granite monuments, buildings, streets, walks, public seating, planters, fountains, artwork, all granite. The town feels hard as well in its presentation of mind and soul.   Chiseled words meant to inspire and adulate and provoke thought are everywhere.  While the words of great fathers continue to amaze one with their rapier perceptions they show  little use for softness in this town.  Perhaps this is the way it should be to demonstrate a certain American strength to the world.  Perhaps the cherry trees in spring help.  Perhaps if it were not so muggy and hot today.  Still, I can not shake DC’s hardness from my mind down to the soreness of my feet.

Sirens, seemed to be an ever occurring event during the day.  Sirens escorting somebody’s black limo,  or monitoring protest marches and parades.   The protest march we saw had something to do with the disabled and a strange parade of scooter chairs very, very slowly moved up a cordoned off street.  I couldn’t understand  what they were chanting.  I was too concerned about finding a parking space in DC.  We found one, a two hour limit.  What can you do in two hours?  It was broken and ate quarters without giving back any time!  We called the number on the meter and they gave us a confirmation of call number to reference when we got the ticket!  

The Capitol mall walk was a good one and great for people watching.  People of every conceivable race and country were there with an extra large dose of baby boomer vets wearing dark baseball caps with scrambled eggs.

It was a sunny day and we made our way back to the truck passing in front of the White House.  It appeared there was a large contingent of police and swat types with motorcycles and I assumed this must be the daily cadre.  Then as I started to slow down to take a photo the security all started yelling for everyone to get away! to move off! disperse! don’t stop! and letting no one else pass in front of the fence.  They were shouting and using large arm movements.  No one else was allowed to enter the zone.  I tried to snap a shot as I was moving away when I heard a voice 12” from my left ear, “Move on.  Right now.”  He had the timber and tone down just right.  It was direct, insistent and commanding.  I moved on.  The slightest hesitations of any one were noted  and brusquely  moved on.  There was no touching but they knew how to enter one’s zone of personal space to intimidate.   After we were perhaps 30 yards away we started gathering in small groups again and as I turned around I noticed that a completely empty swath from the White House fence to Constitution Ave. that was perhaps 500‘wide.   Then I heard the chopper blades.  There coming around the Washington Monument at about 3/4 of its height thumped Marine 1 the presidential helicopter.  It was impressive.  After rounding the Washington Monument it made a bee line, about 250’ above me at its closest, for the White house lawn.  We could not see but heard it land.  “Jo, did we just see Obama fly in?”  This is probably a typical day in DC.  But it was still neat.

Yes, we got a ticket. 

It thundered with lightning.

Annapolis