Washington DC, 4 April 2005, 8am. So I awaken to my alarm, bright’n’early, ready to head out there and proceed to steps 2 and 3 of the Master Plan, which are tentatively listed as 2.) Arrive for post-doc interviews and 3.) Knock ‘em dead. Step 1, of course, was 1.) Head out and arrive in one piece on foreign soil. Step 1 had been achieved already, I suppose. Nevertheless, grand plans were afoot to head out to Silver Spring, MD, about 25 minutes north-ish of DC on the Red Line metro, current home of the now-legendary Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and, more importantly, The Annex of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, which is where I needed to be. Getting there was a little tricky. I had managed to mosey out Georgetown-way the previous day, but had entirely neglected to do a test run out to WRAIR, so I in fact had very little idea where it was. Also, in my infinite wisdom, had entirely neglected to bring any of the emails or anything else with me with contact numbers to phone to find out exactly where to go. Not clever. Nevertheless, knew I was going to a specific address, listed in Silver Spring MD, so it made sense to take the Red Line to Silver Spring, MD. Moseyed out to the local Blue Line at Farragut West and proceeded 2 stops to Metro Center and switched to the Red. Easy-peasy. Headed out to Silver Spring. Easy-peasy. Realised at that point that there are about 36 buses moseying in and around Silver Spring and I hadn’t the faintest notion which one I needed to be on. Asked at the Metro station and they pointed me to a bus pulling out of the station. I’d told the chaps at WRAIR I would be there around 9.30, give or take – it was now around 9.35. I was in a bit of a panic, wondering what to do and debating whether or not to hunt down a cab. At this time, I was loitering in the bus shelter, having been assured that another will arrive in 10 minutes. I was told this by an elderly Nigerian lady, waiting for de bos to Waltared Ahmy hospiter. I was still panicking about it when I eventually asked her if there were any taxis nearby. Turns out the taxi rank is just alongside the bus shelter, cunningly hidden away by nothing much. She kept insisting I wait for the bus and not waste any money on the cab. When it became clear that I was going to take a cab, she asked if she could tag along, even though she had only enough for busfare there and back. Having looked at the map at the metro station, I figured it couldn’t be too far, so I agreed to foot the bill. We hastened to the cab which was first in the queue for passengers and announced our destinations. Immediately it became apparent that the hospital at Walter Reed and the Annex at Walter Reed were as far apart from one another as you could possibly get while still physically being in Silver Spring, MD. The Nigerian lady suddenly realised this as well and became concerned that I wasn’t going to keep up my end of the bargain. After reassuring her, we got under way. Turns out she was there applying for a job as a carer of the elderly and was told to come to the Hospital on this day at this time. I, of course, was going for a meeting to see if WRAIR and I could come up with something mutually beneficial for me to research. The cabbie was Indian, so we had a very cosmopolitan jaunt in and about Silver Spring, getting to our respective destinations. The Nigerian lady was wondering whether or not she could get her nephew in .za to sponsor a flight to Johannesburg for her so she could try her luck in the .za job market. The cabbie thought this was the funniest thing since The Office on tv, and told her she must be out of her mind if she thought she’d be better off in .za than in the US. I’m inclined to agree, I think, with him. Anyway, we got her to the front door of the hospital and then floored it to the Annex on the far side of town. Very military. Lots of uniformed buzz-cut grunts with guns hanging around the front gate, very polite but very official, asking who I was and where I was going and do I have a number they could call to confirm. This took a while to sort out. I tried to get out of the car and was told, very firmly, to stay in the vehicle, sir. I pleaded my case, kept dropping names and qualifications and titles and regimental units and whatever else I could remember about the guy I was coming to see and still they claimed no knowledge of him. They also took my SA driver’s licence, since I was not carrying any other ID; both my SA and UK/EU passports being back at the hotel a goodly distance hence. At this point it’s almost 10am, and I am well late and, apparently, well lost, too. I kept confirming that the road we needed was there in the base, which they acknowledged but would not let me enter. Finally a more senior soldier came out to enquire about the ruckus. He asked where I was going and for an extension number and then eventually realised where I was meant to be, gave the other soldier a mouthful, and pointed us up the road to 503. “503, man, that’s where he’s going, let him in.” “That’s not what he told me; he said something else.” “What did you tell him, sir?” I said 503, Experimental Therapeutics, to the Colonel, that’s what I said. “He says he said 503.” “He didn’t say 503.” I did, actually; that’s the only info I know since I don’t have a phone number. Is it 503? “Yeah, it’s 503. Let him in. 503.” Et cetera. So there I was, filthy foreigner, smuggling my way into a Yank military installation on a driver’s licence. Well, that’s what it looked like, apparently; I did have an appointment, after all, and they had a name-badge for me and everything at the front desk, so I was feeling much better about two minutes later being given the grand tour by the big boss. I met him and his deputy back in Tanzania on the previous tour, so in a sense I guess I am a kinda grizzled old veteran, too. Anyway, got shown around, got introduced to various people (with whom I later had waaaaaaaaay too much to drink at the conference venue itself – another story for a later chapter) and got to sit and shoot the shit and talk about the frontiers of science and all that sort of cool stuff with various army and navy officers all seconded to the Materiel Command. It was all very promising, which is important, and they seemed genuinely keen to have me there; not just in the “everyone smile, we have a visitor” kind of way, so that was all good. Anyway, made plans to meet up again with the various people in Colorado – bearing in mind at this point that the conference itself was a mere 6 days away – and had to get myself back to DC via the bus and Metro stations for the afternoon meeting at Georgetown University. Was advised by the big boss to wait for the bus since “cabs take forever to get here” and proceeded to the bus stop. Realised after a few minutes that I had no idea what the bus would say, what number it may be or which side of the road it might appear on since the road was in the middle of the army base, after all, and who knows whether it was a loop or a through road or what? Eventually got onto the bus and shot back to the Metro station and shot back to Farragut West via Metro Center as before. Got back to the hotel well later than planned, though, with the wait for the bus, and realised that I was going to be late into Georgetown. Also, having spotted the University, I actually hadn’t the faintest notion where the Chemistry Department was. UCT in Cape Town, as a for-instance, has 4 campuses – Upper Campus (containing Upper, Middle and Lower Campuses), containing the bulk of the University; Medical Campus, about a mile further north; Hiddingh Campus, site of the original UCT buildings when it was still just a school back in 1820, which is in the city bowl and has the Fine Arts and Drama departments, and the Breakwater Campus, which has the Graduate School of Business down in the very larney an en vogue Waterfront/harbour business district. All within about 10 minutes of each other, but you wouldn’t want to have to walk it. Anyway, phoned the number I had – for some reason, I had remembered to take that one down – and got no answer. The hotel then generously called up 411 for me and got the Georgetown exchange on the phone and they pointed me to the correct building. They also generously offered to keep my bag, since I had now checked out, until I could retrieve it at about 5pm. I’d anticipated being in Georgetown by 1:30pm and it was now almost 2, so I nabbed a cab right there on Pennsylvania and headed to the University. Got there, got pointed at the Chem department and met up with the students from the lab. The professor in charge of the lab, ironically, was in meetings at Walter Reed all that day, so he had arranged for his senior PhD student and the rest to show me around and take me out to dinner and make sure I got back to the airport okay for my late-night flight back to Noo Yawk. All very generous, bearing in mind I met him via email entirely accidentally when I replied to an email and neglected to deselect the “reply to all” option and we had sent a grand total of 4 emails between us in the preceding 8 days and here I was being taken out and about the town by his people. At this point, to show I am not a complete freeloader, let me point out that I had originally made plans to hijack him at the conference anyway; he just jumped the gun a bit on me, and fortuitously so at that. So I swanned around Georgetown University for a couple of hours, shot the shit about science and malaria and where their and my research was headed and how we could integrate what we both knew into a decent project and cool stuff like that and then we made plans to head out to The Tombs, a nearby restaurant and bar frequented by GU staff and students which I had spotted on my way in, at around 5.30pm. This would give me sufficient time to have a couple of beers and dinner with everyone as well as getting back to L’enfant Plaza to catch the bus back to IAD. Turns out that the bus to IAD from L’enfant Plaza actually heads back through Rosslyn – which I knew – and Rosslyn is a 5 minute walk from Tombs across the Potomac (or the Chesapeake; whichever river is right there). And that the GUTS bus – that’s the Georgetown student bus service, you know – runs from Tombs to Rosslyn every 15 minutes or so. So we were all sorted. What was a surprise is that we were all blocked for ID. Now, I know the drinking age over there is 21, but I certainly no longer look 21, and most of the guys I was with that evening are all mid 20s as well, so I was not expecting to be asked to verify my age. That happened almost everywhere on the trip, as it happens, except at Maloney’s in Beverly Hills, which is a UCLA bar and where they serve beer in 1-litre jugs, and at the various establishments we visited at the conference venue, where they didn’t seem to be arsed about age. Still, the local beer was particularly good, and I got an enormous club sandwich which hit the spot quite nicely as well, all paid for by the dude I was not meeting that day. He was hoping to hook up with us for dinner, but the meetings with the defence guys ran well late, it seems. Anyway, one of the PhD students, a Ghanaian girl, actually stays out near IAD, to boot, so she made sure I got on the right bus – same as her, basically – and got me right to where I needed to be, with about half an hour to spare. At this point I called up Ryan and told him the flight had been delayed by about an hour and I would only be in at 11pm, not 10pm as initially suspected. This was part of the master plan, of course, so I wouldn’t be obliged to get a cab from HPN back to the house. Boarded another United pisswilly plane – also a Canadair RJ, like I came in on – at the G-terminal operated entirely by United Express and, once we hit the air – we were about 25th in the queue for take-off – had a particularly choppy flight back home. We hit a shitload of turbulence coming into HPN, and we hit the icy runway rather hard. I was not too sad to get off that plane at all. Ryan and Sam were waiting in the carpark, which was cool, and we headed off back to Mamaroneck, about 10 minutes away, arriving very close to midnight. All in all, a good – if somewhat stressful – tour to DC. -d-