July 28

Vacation in D.C. First thing I saw off the plane in DC was a kiosk that was selling FBI, CIA t-shirts. It didn't help that I was already winding down from my morning wake up call that almost wasn't. (Cats actually woke me up, not the alarm, how sad is that). Made my flight by 15 minutes. Another ominous note was in Cincinnati where I read Delta was going to file for Bankruptcy. Don't have to tell you what airlines I was on. Mr. Watkins, hopefully ARO will include at least one picture that you can double as a postcard. Went to most of the monuments in the immediate area. Petrena, I'm assuming when you say "Visit the Washington Memorial" you mean take the elevator to the top. Well, I didn't because you need passes and I'll pass on that for now. Also, Joe, you need a pass to visit the Permanent Exhibition on the Holocaust, which I will also have to pass on. I did visit the childrens portion which basically was David's version of Anne Frank. Saw WWII, Korean, Vietnam memorials. Didn't see any Rockstead's or Bohn's or Overman's, but did see a Overman-Rodriguez at the Vietnam. I think I liked the WWII memorial the best, at the base of the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial. Didn't visit the Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt Memorials across the bay. Can't find anything in the guides here about no Chicago Steak restaurant, but like she always does, she dragged me (almost literally since I was wore out from the day excursion) to a Brazilian restaurant near the Zoo. Tomorrow is the Smithsonian and maybe the White House tour. I'm sure there's more, Natural History? We'll probably see the Zoo and Aquarium Saturday. Oh, the Hotel Washington is the same hotel Richard and I stayed at years ago for the ALG informational gathering NLC did. Well, gotta go, need my beauty rest for tomorrow. Randy Addendum from Azucena... Well, the highlight to my day today was actually at the conference. Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway spoke at our conference for an hour and a half. It was one of the best speaches I had attended. He was only going to talk for an hour but asked for more time and the Admiral told him to take all the time he needed. There are some excellent quotes he mentioned, here's one If we knew what we were doing.. they wouldn't call it research, would they? - Albert Einstein Azucena

July 29

Next Day in DC Ok, getting up was a chore. I thought waking up was tough, getting out of bed was tougher. Hadn't used my walking muscles in a while. Whatever you do, don't stop, otherwise, you'll have a hard time starting up again. So, I walked a few blocks to the Museum of American History, decided I'd have to wait 15 minutes before it opened, then walked several blocks (15 min worth) to the National Air and Space Museum. Very crowded getting in so I walked a few more blocks to the Capitol. Walking... that's all it seems I do these past few days. Anyway, there was some type of filming going on. Looked like they were taking graduation pictures. Name of movie could be called "The Sentinal???". Got my tour pass and headed back over to the Air and Space Museum to waste a few hours before my tour of the Capital. One thing I learned in my tour was each state is allocated two statues (bronze or marble) of anyone they want to display around the interior. They have 99 (King Damien is one, www.aoc.gov/cc/art/nsh/damien.cfm). Texas has Stephen F. Austin, and Sam Houston. For a list of all the statues, www.aoc.gov/cc/art/nsh/index.cfm (by the way, N Mex only has one, they haven't decided on who the other will be). Ok, so I walked back several blocks past American History to Natural History and met up with Azucena. Spent several hours there including a new Smithsonian Friday Night Jazz session. Sat next to someone who use to work for J.J. Jake Pickle, lived in Austin, now lives in D.C. I don't know whose idea this was, but I need a break from this vacation. It's taking me longer to get going and we're suppose to go to the zoo tomorrow and that means more walking. I'm beginning to hate walking. Maybe we can rent one of those Segways (which, by the way, the creator spoke at a meeting Azucena was having today!!!). I'm done. Haven't found the hot tub yet, so I'll have to create one in the hotel room. Not as much fun. Randy

July 30

Last Day in DC (ARO) Well, I'm going to provide the update for today. We decided to take it leisurely since Randy's getting to be an old man and can't keep up the pace like he used to. We slept in and then went to the mall next to the Washington monument and then came back to hotel for lunch. The restaurant is on top of the hotel (about the 11th floor) and the location is excellent (15th and Pennsylvania Avenue). We got a nice table on the edge and could see the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the WWII museum and the Jefferson Memorial from up there. I'm attaching one shot of Randy on the roof. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a helicopter (looked like the presidential one) landed on the White House lawn so I got a little bit of fuzzy video of it. Randy decided to take a nap and I decided to pack up all of our newly acquired junk. Afterwards, we took the metro (aka subway) to the zoo. Luckily Randy decided to stop at the Panda cafe to get some bottled water and it provided us with a good view of the papa Panda. He was there for about a minute before he wandered out of view. We then stood in line 20 minutes to get another glimpse through the official viewing area. He was sleeping and all you pretty much saw was a panda butt. The zoo is real nice, lots of natural habitat. The golden lion tamarin (a golden brown tree monkey) is actually allowed to wander free. We went to the small mammal house (think monkeys), the reptile house (big snakes and komodo dragons) and the invertebrate house. They actually had a display of golden orb spiders which was not enclosed in glass and you could touch the spiders and the webs. Yes, Evelyn, you would have gotten the creeps from this, several standers by did. We saw some tigers, cheetahs and even a Kangaroo playing dead. All in all, it was fun but our feet were definitely tired after all that walking. We're back at the hotel now getting ready to wake up at 4am Eastern Time (3am Texas time). I have a 6am flight and Randy's flight is at 6:45 am. Oh by the way Valerie, Randy apologizes for his typo. He called Fr. Damien, King Damien, by accident. See y'all soon! Azucena