Mamaroneck and Washington DC, 3 April 2005, particularly early. Ryan had already long since resigned himself to lugging me to el aeropuerto whilst on my travels, and in this regard, had pointed me during planning of the grand tour at White Plains, aka Westchester County Municipal Airport, or something suchlike, on account of it being pretty much within pissing distance of the house in Mamaroneck, a picture of which I will probably attempt to scan in and upload at some point. There are certainly a lot of commas in that last sentence, let me tell you. Anyway, I had done the scrimp’n’save bit at the local travel agent back here to make sure that I had the cheapest flights in the history of the world. Bearing in mind, I could pretty much tweak the trip any which way and get my entire 5 stop tour over 18 days for substantially less than the trip to Denver for the conference alone, and since it was fully funded and the agency had agreed to cough up for the lot if I could prove it to be cheaper, I was on some fairly horrific lowest-cost flights. Exhibit A:) The 06h30 hop from HPN (that’s White Plains, in IATA – International Association of Travel Agents – lingo) to IAD – Dulles, in DC. Exhibit B:) The 22h30 return leg IAD-HPN. Only horrific because of the 90 minute prior check-in in the case of A, and the 23h45 arrival time in the case of B. Nevertheless. Day 1 wound down fairly early at say 9pm EST (which my body clock was telling me was 3am Cape Town time) and you guys were doing the whole daylight-saving clock-changeover thingy on that Sunday morning, so I ended up losing an hour of sleep to boot. I was not the happiest of campers when I came to at 04h15 and had to get ready to go. One, it was fucking freezing – I may have mentioned before that on the Tuesday, some 3 days prior to departure for distant shores, I was in fact recharging the remnants of my summer tan, with temperatures in the 90s back home. Here on the east coast, I was freezing my ‘nads off. 2, the old body clock was in some kind of mild disarray. Nevertheless, managed to get dressed and check that I had enough stuff for 2 days in DC in the enormous carry-on (already cleverly packed that way in Cpt, I should add – well done, me), grabbed my storm-shell jacket, roused my chauffeur – Ryan – and headed off to HPN. It was a beautiful – if somewhat chilly – morning; slight cloud cover, stars still shining, but clear and crisp. On the short hop to Hpn, I Was given a bit of low-down. “You staying in town?” Yup, about 4 blocks up from George Bush. I’m going to pop in to say hey this afternoon, I reckon. “Watch for traffic.” Eh? Dude, I’m 28. I do know how to cross the street. “You know how to cross back home. Here it’s different.” Bitch, please! (Thanks, Eminem.) Different how? “We don’t have to stop at red lights here.” That threw me a bit. “Didn’t we just stop at a red coming out of your place?” I tried. “That’s because we went left. If we were going right, we don’t have to stop. Kinda like those stop signs back home with the left-turn yield? It’s right-turn yield here, because they drive on the wrong side of the road. And it applies to red lights, not yield signs, unless it tells you otherwise.” Fortunately, our next turn is right. He points out the no-right-on-red sign, fortuitously nailed to the lamp-post. Our next one is also a right, with no sign, also pointed out. Technically, I suppose, its absence was pointed out, but I digress. “Another thing,” he continues, “each lane may have a different light, depending on how it merges.” Right on cue, we merge with an expressway. Or parkway – I’m not sure – and, lo and behold, the two merge lanes each have a red light suspended above them and the two flanking lanes have a green one. A side note: I haven’t seen traffic lights suspended over intersections since leaving Harare, Zimbabwe, back in December 1985. In Cpt, and all of .za, I think, we just have traffic lights on lamp-posts on each corner of the intersection or island. So there was a surprise. “So take care,” he continues as we approach Hpn. The runways are lit up like Christmas trees. The building itself is a hive of minor activity – it is barely 5am, of course – and I thank him for the lift, apologizing again for the awkward timing, and remind him of tomorrow night’s arrival time. I deliberately make it an hour earlier so it doesn’t sound quite so horrific. “Let me know that you get there okay, right?” he says, “and also if you are delayed tomorrow night.” I head into the building, at this stage craving a good cup of coffee, and wondering what the chances are that the airport will have an open restaurant at this fairly early hour. Head to the check-in counter, get checked in with no hassle, get my bags trace-checked “for explosive residues,” the safety guy says, and head off to find some food. Chances were slim to non-existent, unfortunately, but I was advised that the coffee shop would be open at 6am and boarding was at 6:15am – it’s one of those tiny little 50-seater regional jet planes, not the 737 I am used to – and I figured I could hold out till then. People who could not hold out till then were flanking me – a loud, obnoxious guy, a good few dozen kilos over where he should be, and his teenage son, going much the same way. The gentleman in question had a few choice comments that the coffee shop wasn’t yet open and how the fuck could they fucking treat passengers like this and various other fucking things he was fucking not fucking happy about. Eventually the safety man eyeballed him into silence. I headed up to the observation deck and made a call to home to my folks – Ryan had loaned me a prepaid Cingular sim card which my phone was more than happy to use – and to my mate Ands, the poet-accountant, who by my calculations was about a half-hour away from heading to Cpt to catch his horrific Airbus to Jnb and then on to Atlanta and then San Diego. I attempted to advise him on a good seat, knowing which ones were not good. It’s cheap to phone home – about 85c a minute, in US money, which is something ridiculous like 5 bucks in our money – as opposed to phoning the US from home, which is closer to 10 bucks a minute. Anyway, we shot the shit for a bit, then I watched no planes landing from the observation deck at all – it was barely 5am, as mentioned earlier. A pity, really, because it was the only airport I was at with a good observation deck – and I saw seven of your airports – and no way to take advantage. I did realise then how small it was for an airport. There were only those little pisswilly Cessnas and Learjets and stuff like our little plane there – not a baby Boeing or tiny Airbus in sight. Anyway, eventually they called us, we moved into the brisk sharp air of the tarmac (and Happy, who was luckily on the same flight, launched into another tirade about them not ferrying us the 3 steps to the tiny plane, miserable bastard) and Paulita the stewardess told me my gigantic hand-luggage was too enormous for her tight little storage compartment. I avoided any lascivious schoolboy jokes – a valiant effort, I thought, for such an easy set-up – and was directed to planeside check-in – essentially a large trolley for stuff the crew refused to have in the cabin. Then I went back to the plane and was shown to my comfy seat. A word on cheap regional flights requiring a 5am check-in: nobody likes them, and so about 7 people take them. In this regard; and because it was such a titchy little plane, we had to play musical chairs until the pilots were happy with “the load” and its erstwhile balance. And off we went to DC, with me having an entire row to myself to get comfy in. We landed at Dulles and they gave us all the necessary info for connecting flights and whatever. Dulles is enormous (like my hand-luggage) with about one million gates and planes there. Presumably the United Airlines computers have everyone checked out fully because there must have been a good few hundred flights departing in the near future and they seemed to know exactly where we were all headed. Seems Happy and Happy Jr were Florida-bound, and they couldn’t figure out where to go, resulting in much arguing between themselves and the stewardess. Ironically, when somebody else held up Paulita and everyone else from deplaning, asking identical questions, Happy chirps up from behind “let the real people off the plane first before you ask stupid questions” like the in-bred, ignorant twat that he is. At this point, almost all of us knew that then needed to be at gate G7 in terminal G – which is the United Express terminal and has little pisswilly planes galore at it – and that their luggage was checked all the way through to Gainesville on another pisswilly plane, but still they hopped on the bus to Terminal A to go to baggage claim. Stupid prick. Do you guys know what “pisswilly” means? It essentially means “small,” presumably the imagery coming from a flaccid penis for peeing pruposes, or piss-willy, as opposed to a hard-on, I suppose. I digress again. I had already grabbed my gigantic luggage from the planeside trolley again and proceeded off the bus into Terminal A. I was not sure where I was heading, at this point, or how to get there. I knew Dulles was some distance from DC proper, and I knew I could get there on the red line Metro train from West Falls Church, and I could get to West Falls on the Dulles Express bus, but exactly where all these things were was a bit touch-n-go at this point. Nevertheless, it was a case of first things first, and as I moseyed past a Starbucks, I decided to give it a go. I mean, it was now around 07h30 and I had not had coffee since about 2 hours before Kennedy, and that was shitty SAA instant coffee as well, and everybody knows that Starbucks coffee has about 5 times more caffeine in it than normal filter coffee, and everyone knows that it is awesome, so I hauled out my wallet and proceeded to purchase a Grande cappuccino and a banana-nut muffin. We used to sell coffee here at the university, actually, the 5 guys in the office all being largely addicted, and we’d make a 7-cup pot and flog off the other 2 cups for a nominal fee to buy good coffee for our own fix. It worked remarkably well for about 2 years before the novelty wore off and we got tired of the HOD rushing in and ordering 10 cups which he needs for like 5 minutes ago for his guests and we’d have to drop everything to grind some beans and get some fresh distilled water from the lab and fill up the milk jug and sugar bowl – for presentation purposes for his guests – and stuff so we packed it in and just ended up sponsoring our own fixes ourselves. We were the Acme Coffee Co, and later remodeled it, after Virgin barged into SA, into the Vergin’ Acme Coffee Co. We made – and still make, the two of us who remain – excellent coffee, a good mix of varietals (French Roast, Blue Mountain, Mocca Java etc) and blends which we purchase and drink or blend further (a hint of Viennese really takes the bitterness right out of French Roast, let me tell you), so I was keen to see if we could give the almighty Starbucks a run for their money. Dude, we piss all over them! What a let-down. Their coffee is like making love in a canoe – it’s fucking close to water, to paraphrase a famous comedian. The muffin was good, though. Anyway, managed to track down a bus driver and ask him which would be the best way to get to Pennsylvania Avenue, which, as you know, is where George Bush lives. Turns out the hotel I had booked into, the Lombardy, is around there somewhere on that road. The driver said get on this bus – it goes to Rosslyn, in Virginia, and then on to L’enfant Plaza, which is about 4 blocks from Penn Avenue. So I hopped in and paid the $3 – much less than the Manhattan bus transfer, especially at 6 ZAR to the USD – and off we went. Took about 35 minutes or thereabouts to the Plaza, and the driver showed me a landmark – in our case, “that lady over there in the red coat” – to know when to stop walking. I looked on the map in the airport magazine – very handy thing at Dulles, the airport magazine with maps of The District as well as metro maps – and realised that Penn is fairly long, and the spot with the woman in the red jacket could be anywhere near the hotel, or anywhere not near it at all. So I called the hotel - took a while for them to understand my "accent" - and it turns out the lady in the red jacket was probably about 3 blocks away from it, so that was easy enough. Anyway, I moseyed down the Mall, past the various Smithsonians, looking at the gigantic spike and the Capitol and stuff like that before arriving at the place. At this point, I was about to find out whether 5 internet-booked hotel rooms, located through a dodgy cheap hotels site, were all valid bookings or whether I had been fleeced. Surprisingly, to me at least, it all worked beautifully. We haven’t quite gone the hang of internet shopping in .za yet – retailers tend to make the internet prices ridiculously higher than in-store, even for the same outlets, and delivery fees make things even more retarded than ever; hotel internet booking here is unheard of. Usually you let a travel agent book the hotel for you, you see. Anyway, far from being a complete hole in the ground – and some of the hotels we ended up in were, let me tell you, all booked from the same site – the Lombardy is magnificent. There is a big, framed letter from the White House in the lobby thanking them for putting up several dozen dignitaries flawlessly for some big event in 2003, so they obviously know what they are doing, and like all hotels in DC proper – as opposed to in Virginia, just 15 minutes away across the Potomac, or Maryland, 10 minutes away in the other direction – they are not cheap. The special internet rate was about reduced from $150 to $110/night – I don’t think my entire 10 days in Tanzania came to more than $200, frankly – and even the shitty one-star chain hotels are about that in DC. If I knew how good the Metro there was before arriving, I would have actually gone for a cheaper option a little further out of town; nevertheless, the Lombardy was absolutely beautiful and spotlessly clean. Butlers and doormen and chauffeurs and everything everywhere, very very larney, and a magnificent king-sized bed with an enormous shower/bathtub and 60-odd channels of television and I was happier than the proverbial clam. And it was right in the heart of DC, near the trendy districts of Adams-Morgan, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown, within walking distance of four different Metro lines, so The District was my proverbial oyster, to carry on with the seafood theme. Anyway, ditched my junk at the Lombardy, suited up – it was extremely cold – and went out into the streets, looking for Georgetown University, site of tomorrow afternoon’s meeting. And thus – the airport magazine map coming in handy once more – found myself in Georgetown after about 10 minutes. Went into my first ever Barnes and Noble, a Gap, and then had my first experience with your Abercrombie and Fitch. Now, we don’t get A&F here in .za; frankly, I’m not sure whether they would last. Sales assistants seem a little too snooty for the sort of stuff they’re peddling – and we don’t go for snooty, us duidelik ous from the Northern Suburbs, but they probably would in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town, where, for some reason, they tend to think the sun shines out of their arses – and my mate Andrew is not too impressed with their quality, having been suckered into buying a golf-shirt on sale for some forty bucks only to have the seams unravel within two days. Still, fairly nice stuff in there – although I prefer the surf-label gear stuff we get here, frankly; much the same styles but a little funkier and less generic, IMHO – and although I did instantly get a bad vibe from the clerks in there, most of whom had a little too much “please, hit me” attitude about them, it’s probably not a terrible place. I’ll admit they came in handy later on. Anyway, spotted the university so I had a vague idea of where I would need to be the next day, then moseyed back to the hotel to get my camera. Next planned stop: The Smithsonian air and space museum. There is a new annex containing a shitload more stuff at Dulles, actually; unfortunately, I ran short of time to see it, which is annoying, because they have a Concorde in there, amongst other things. Nevertheless, I did get to the original one in the Mall, and spent a good few hours moseying about there. On the way out of the hotel, I asked the lovely lady at reception which way to George Bush’s house, and she smiled and said “head left out the front door, about 3 blocks; you’ll need an appointment, though.” So I headed left out the front door, the doormen and chauffeurs all bowing and scraping and stuff, which I am not used to, being a mere middle-class guy from the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town and all. Nevertheless, camera in hand, wrapped up against the cold, I set off for #1600 to see if I could get in for a chat with George W. Anyway, it’s very scenic there in DC – loads and loads of trees and parks and memorials and statues and old buildings and parks with memorial statues next to trees and old buildings and all that stuff – and I took a few pictures of the famous cherry trees coming into bloom (without realizing I was photographing the famous cherry trees coming into bloom, in my infinite wisdom, of course) and ended up in front of the White House watching some guys playing roller hockey in front of a little yellow camping tent containing people who are protesting action in Afghanistan and Iraq. I chatted to a dude strapping on his inline skates and asked whether they played often. He said they don’t call themselves the White House Inline Hockey Sunday League (or words to that effect) for nothing. I mentioned that if they were to try that sort of thing outside Thabo Mbeki’s place here in Cape Town, lots of annoyed looking men with guns would come out and tell them to piss off, and not politely like all the Yank cops and everyone seem to do over there. He gave me a blank stare and then headed into the game. I debated whether or not to approach the woman in the yellow protest tent. It’s right in GWB’s back-yard; I wondered whether or not they had snipers on the roof covering her every move. A sign, hand-written quite badly, proclaimed that the protestors had been there 24/7/365 since some time in early 2002, I think, so I figured it might be safe to talk to the occupant for a minute or two without getting a high-velocity bullet through my stylish Billabong beanie and I approached the tent, thinking of what I might say. I assume that they have people in there doing shifts and that the person there at the moment hadn’t actually been there since 2002. Anyway, as I made my way over, the occupant came out. Before I could say anything, she shot a baleful look at me, like I’d crawled out of a piece of cheese, grunted, glowered a bit longer and then went back into the tent. I figured perhaps she couldn’t be arsed to talk to every Tom, Dick and Harry tourist who walked past who was interested in her cause without putting themselves on the line and camping out in George’s driveway, and so decided to go off on my merry way. Besides, she looked kinda rabid; definitely a mite on the carnivorous side as well. And if she had been there for 2 years and then some, undoubtedly that explained why she looked like she’d been pulled through a bush backwards. So I observed the status quo and pushed off, aiming for the gigantic concrete spike right there on the river bank. I turned to look back at GWB’s house and realised that in fact I had been loitering around the service entrance, and the front was this other side, which presumably explains the busloads of filthy tourists hanging on the fence next to the 8000 tourbuses. I was able to turn up my nose at these uninitiated hordes and proceeded to snap a shot or two using my new long paparazzi zoom lens, congratulating myself at the time for having the foresight to purchase from Amazon. One thing about DC, shops are closed on Sunday. The few which open only do so after 12pm, so the lone photographic store I passed in Georgetown, where I might have bought said paparazzi lens, was not an option. Found myself back on the Mall, just behind the spike, watching a shitload of planes fly overhead. DCA (Reagan Airport) is right across the river, and it is not small, so there is air traffic about every 6 minutes. And they are quite low planes as well, and big ones, not like our pisswilly one I arrived in, so it took a little getting used to, recent history obviously playing its part. There are plenty of cherry trees on the Mall, and smack bang there in the middle of everything, I noticed a kite. Then I heard some loud music. Further inspection further down the mall revealed a fairly impressive set of concert speakers and rather large sound desk and about 5000 people milling about. And plenty of kites. Lots and lots and lots of them, all shapes and sizes. Turns out it was the annual Kite Festival. Some pretty impressive stuff, including a two-man 2-kite competition – synchronized kiting, I guess – played to particularly raucous hard-rock. Took some pictures, then, finally, got to the Air and Space museum. Had to ask for directions, because I was in the wrong road, and realised when I spoke to a policeman that my lips were frozen. I couldn’t get anything coherent out. To anyone who is wondering whether the Smithsonian is a good idea, it is. I enjoyed myself thoroughly in there; and I only saw the Air and Space museum. After I had done my thing, headed back to the Metro to get quickly back to the hotel to ditch my camera before heading out to do some shopping. Had already procured a gift for the psychiatrist in my unit – an Oscar Wilde quotations book; he is Wilde’s biggest fan and Chairman of the SA Oscar Wilde Society and has managed to get a paper published in the Lancet, the world’s most highly respected medical journal, on the cause of Wilde’s death back in 1900 – but was still on the prowl for gifts for family, especially my sister for her 30th birthday, and friends. And gloves for the snow in Colorado. The lovely lady in reception pointed me back at the subway to a place called the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, a mega-mall in Arlington, basically across from the big cemetery and the Pentagon itself. So off I went. The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City is a very impressive spot – all very hoity-toity larney shops (Bloomingdales, Saks etc) as well as another Gap and A&F and a Sam Goody and all sorts of things. This is where the A&F came in handy. Back at the hotel, I had taken the smart shirt and stuff out of my bag for tomorrow’s interviews so it could hang overnight and get rid of any creases, and was struck by the annoying revelation that I had not packed any underwear. Rather, I had – an extra pair of socks – just not enough. Anyway, knowing I was looking for a sports shop (for snowboarding gloves, which is why the Lombardy staff had aimed me at a mega-mall, knowing that most DC stores are closed Sundays), I was in the position of not having to try my luck back in Georgetown and had aimed to pick up the necessary at Pentagon City. So I had to buy – had a choice of going for something larney which would be much cheaper than at home, like cK from Bloomingdales, or something exclusive, which we can’t get at home. Like A&F. Cursing my own inherent snootiness, I picked up some boxers and stuff from both A&F and the Gap, because hey, why not? Also picked up an awesome Larry’s Cookie from Larry’s Cookies, which I wholeheartedly recommend, by the way. Not sure if Larry’s is merely a DC thing or nationwide, like Au Bon Pain, but get it if you can, especially the white chocolate and macadamia nuts. Then went across the street to another shopping center of some sort, containing massive outlet stores; in particular, a Best Buy. I was browsing through the CDs there, looking for one CD that I have been trying unsuccessfully to get hold of since its release in 2002, thinking that it is a limited edition and that I should probably just get it from Amazon, where I have it wishlisted but for some stupid reason did not order when I got my lens from them. And there it was – Jerry Cantrell’s Degradation Trip Volumes 1 and 2 in a box set. The original Degradation Trip was a 12-track single disc released in early 2002 with Roadrunner releasing the second volume later that year. But it isn’t just a second disc – the original Trip had 12 tracks selected from both volumes, so you can either buy the mixed single disc, or the box. You can’t just buy Volume 1 or 2 on its own. Either way, it was a complete surprise to find it there, so I bought it on the spot. It’s an awesome disc, by the way, from the former Alice in Chains co/backup-singer/guitarist, so you should all buy it. Then headed home, on the Blue Line metro, caught up with the crowd coming home from the opening-day Washington Nationals baseball game, with DC having a major league side in the competition for the first time in some 35 years. It was all over TV, which is how I know that little bit of info, but I was amazed at how big baseball still is over there. I would have thought that with the strikes and the season-long cancellations and all that over the last decade that interest had waned somewhat, but I was across the aisle from 3 guys wearing Georgetown sweaters and Nationals peak-caps – presumably freshmen at the University, judging by their youth, or perhaps at a local high school – and they were dropping statistics like snowflakes, walking encyclopaedias, the lot of them. And enthusiastic, which I suppose is the more important factor. The evening was uneventful. Walked through town at sunset, intending to head for the reflective pools and the Lincoln Memorial, but ended up heading the wrong way. Stopped in at a place advertised as a gym and thought about going on for a workout of sorts. I was obviously not going to be visiting my local Planet Fitness anytime soon, and also no karate, so I figured what the hell. I opened the door to go in, but then realised it’s more of the men’s “health club” San Fran-style sauna, if you know what I mean, with a gym attached, so in the end I just walked away, since I’m not sure of protocol in that kind of environment. Went back to the hotel and did some homework of all things – reading recent scientific papers put out by the two units I was seeing in the morning – conscientious lad that I am. -d-