spiderplanet

This time it's photos of miscellany and sculpture.

I didn't notice this until Saturday, so this picture is much later in the lineup. The desk says "DERP!"

Okay then. Back to the serious and important pictures. Here is a map of the National Mall. Everything is laid out pretty easily.

The American Indian Museum has ancient and contemporary work by Native Americans, and the best food that I will probably ever eat in a cafeteria in my whole entire lifetime.

This is the only halfway decent photo that I took inside the American Indian Museum. Part of the reason for that is because better photos would have needed a flash, and I didn't want to be a jerkface.

The outdoor sculptures at the Hirshorn turned out better. Here they are.

Here is a bird.

The same bird is sitting on top of the head of the furthest part of this sculpture, but flew away before I could get a closer photo.

"Please do not touch the sculpture" does not apply to birds, nor should it.

Picasso's baby was so nifty that I needed to wait until no one was around and use a flash.

And then, there's more art!

Scenes from the National Mall.

Other stuff on the national mall includes pigeons and other nuisance creatures.

That last picture earned me a few frowny faces from the local residents. I think that they're not proud that their home city attracts kooks, and they'd prefer that people don't give the kooks the attention they so desperately crave. Understandable, of course, but it's such a silly picture, it needed taking.

Everyone in D.C. was really nice and helpful, the only people that behaved badly were obviously tourists. From everything that I saw, it's an extremely friendly city.

Sunday, Squeaky waited at the bus stop with me while I waited to go back to the airport, and then we said our goodbyes. I expected that the public transportation to the airport would be relatively smooth, and it was even nicer and easier than I would have thought. Everything is very clearly marked, and the transitions are well timed. The Metro drops people off right at the door to the airport.

Here is the view from the Ronald Reagan Airport (a terrible name) on the way home. I haven't seen a pay phone in years!

One of the local Minnesota douche schools had a trip for their most obnoxious students, and it wasn't cool kids like on a band trip, it was some asshole class of school kids. I shared the plane ride back with them.

Here's a photo of immediately after the gate agent announced that it was time to get one's shit together in preparation for boarding. ALL OF THEM got up and stood next to the door to the jet bridge so that they could block the entrance until their section was called.

First I estimated that there were about 100, and then they made enough noise for 200 people. According to the inflight magazine, an A319OW airplane only holds 148 people. I now estimate their mob at about 125.

The little shits calmed down once the plane took off and they'd got their oversized bags, their stuffed animals and their other miscellaneous loose crap into the airplane. I was truly impressed with how well the flight attendants refrained from any throttling, or even petty threats. They were so on top of things that we even took off early.

Getting off the plane was exactly the clusterfuck you would expect from 125 fifteen year olds, but it turns out that there's quite a bit of comfort in knowing that they're going to leave soon, so it wasn't bad.

And then I went home and slept in a comfy bed in a comfy house.

The end.