I am in Washington DC! Home of many old buildings and historical whatsits!

My day started very early, in fact, at 3:00am, which is when I woke up, after a stunning 1.5 to 2 hours of sleep the night before. It was raining! I picked up my coworkers Josh and Trevor and we headed for Calgary.
All was fine until about halfway through when the GIANT SNOWFLAKES began to fall. By the time we reached Calgary, the roads were sufficiently slushy. Basically lately everytime I drive to Calgary, it snows. On our way to the airport we saw a taxi UPSIDE DOWN in the ditch. Not good.

Finally we made it, with a few minutes to spare.

Then we waited in the plane for almost 2 hours while the de-iced the plane.

This was very boring. I attempted to sleep, which did not work. And of course, since we were delayed, we missed our connecting flight in Chicago, but luckily we just got on a plane an hour later, so no big deal.

The Chicago O'Hare Airport is a massive beast. We had to take a tunnel connecting two of the main wings, and it looked like this:



Weird crazy lights and soothing music and the scent of Fairydust on a spring day in Rainbowland. Apparently their attempt to soothe customers who are pissed off at their canceled flights and lost luggage. Air Rage. It was kind of neat/weird. It reminded me of a long out of date "futuristic" ride at Disney World, showing how amazing the world will be in in the year 1990.

We had time for a quick bight, and I saw this at the McDonalds:



Don't worry I didn't eat it.

Chicago is a huge ass city, as I observed from the plane. Giant skyscrapers up against the coast of Lake Michigan, which by the way, is also huge, as you probably know.

Anyways, we eventually made it to our destination, Washington DC. What a town! So many amazing buildings! Check out this shirt!



These guys love their Obama!

Washington sports a very impressive subway system called The Metro. It's pretty much awesome, and will get us everywhere we need to go using this handy Obama Card!





Our first stop after the hotel was to the Washington Capitals game vs the Carolina Hurricanes. The Caps played pretty crappy and lost 5-2. Still, impressive stadium, and I chatted with some Drupalcon dudes too. I found it sorta ironic that, while in the CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, no one sang along with the national anthem. American's love hockey!



After the game we decided to check out that white house and those things, as I had heard the were "the cats meow".

The Dwight Eisenhower Executive Building is AMAZING. A huge building with more columns in it than Tetris clone for the Sega Genesis.




I also noticed the "U of L Sun" on this sign:



On one side of the street across from the Eisenhower building was this:



I haven't a clue what the hell that was; it reminded me of second-hand dot-matrix printers and smelly button-up shirts.

Anyways, just east of the Eisenhower building is the White House!



To my surprise, there was like, nobody there. Except for a few cops, watching from afar. I guess it was too late/cold out for people? I was surprised you could just walk up there. There isn't any warning signs like "Don't hop this fence or you will be killed" or anything like that. Weird! There was one light on in one of the windows, but I didn't see Obama or anything.



Next to the White House is the Treasury Building, which is also quite impressive!





But most amazing of all... was this 7-11 we found nearby! Check it!





Obama water!



This city is pretty cool.

LOTS OF PHOTOS AHEAD!

Ok, so I'm a bit late on updating this. What happened the rest of my trip? Did I get murdered on the mean streets of DC? Did I break a law in the lawless none-state of DC and get imprisoned at Gitmo? Did I slack off and not feel like typing or uploading photos? All three are true, especially the last one.
Why write when you can look at pictures, anyways?

At one of the sessions I observed this slide:



Presenter James Walker was slowing slides of people complaining about Drupal in his "Why I Hate Drupal" presentation. Much like my excitement at the Guided By Voices slide 2 years ago in Vancouver, I picked up on the LCD Soundsystem reference immediately, that being their song "New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down". Come to think of it, that's really not that interesting, but my typewriter is out of eraser ribbon so oh well.

One thing I didn't mention before was that the area surrounding the White House is magic. Black magic. For example, these columns:



When one of the DC cop cars drive up to these, they magically sink into the ground, like something out of Harry Potter and the Sinking Columns. Then the car drives through, and then the columns magically rise up preventing passage for other vehicles. Also we observed a uniformed guy walk up to the White House gates, and part of the gate magically disappeared into the ground! I think he used some sort of ESP or other higher-cognitive function. I think he was a cyborg.



One cool thing about DC is that they have The Onion in newspaper boxes, like a real physical copies! Amazing! Pretty cool. I snagged a copy because they are free, unlike the local hookers (more on that later (not really)).

On Wednesday morning we came across some Korean girls selling donuts near the subway entrance.



Who wouldn't buy donuts from a person in the subway entrance, where the homeless sleep?



I tell you, those donuts were damn good. Speaking of homeless people in subway entrances, I observed a flying hot-dog bun coming out of one on our first day in DC. Apparently, beggars CAN be choosers. But seriously, who wants a stale bun, right?

As I had predicted a few posts ago, it wasn't long before someone brought up the Canadian Health Care system. This happened over lunch with some guys from New Jersey, and they asked how long you have to wait to get your arm fixed, and whether we thought it was a good system. Also, fulfilling another one of my predictions, some guy on the subway asked if it was true that Marijuana was free in Canada! We told him: obviously. Also, that same guy told us about his idea to sell "Obama Snowballs" to tourists which he would create by crushing up ice and freezing them in his freezer. For real.

I made sure to wear my Endangered Ape shirt on Friday, to confuse people into thinking it was some sort of Drupal company. The only comment I got was "is that gaelic?"



On the last day we also did a group shot. The first Drupalcon had about 20 people. This year it was 1400 people, which required more than a brick wall to stand in front of. We settled near the back.





After the final Drupalcon day of sessions, we went to a ribald party thrown by Lullabot where I consumed multiple beers. I was even blessed with a drink ticket from Lullabot James Walker himself!





I stayed out until closing at 2am, and chatted with various people who's names I mostly forget now. Someone from Japan, some guys from Denver, a lady from Boston, some other people from Seattle. I met the worlds biggest Rush fan as well. He thinks they are pretttyyy pretttyyyy prettttty pretttty...prettttty good.

On Saturday we decided, since it was our last full day, to do some sight seeing. We headed to Georgetown, which is one of the older parts of Washington, and is basically streets and streets of little shops and restaurants. Pretty awesome!

Washington has one version of their license plate that bears the following slogan:



Apparently DCers are cranky about that.

I spied this amazing outfit in a store window:



I guess if you hated your kids you could buy that, tell them to flash the same smug smile as the mannequin once they get to school, and then watch from the comfort of your car as your child gets the living shit beat out of him.

I of course had to stop by the Puma store as well.



They had a shoe which was custom made for Shaq there:



Obama Pajamas anyone?



I also saw the most amazing works of art; they must of borrowed these from the Smithsonian!



Why I didn't buy one of those I have no idea.

So then we headed South to the fancy buildings.

Here is a map so you know:



We made way from our Hotel down to Obama's pad.





Some dudes were playing street hockey on the streets next to the White House.


We started to make our way south to all the famous stuff. The White House looks cooler from behind:



This button was on the gate. I have a feeling it doesn't get used much anymore.


This statue is around the same area:



That chick is totally topless! Tits out! I used this opportunity to try out the Digital Zoom on my camera.



I bet that statue had been covered up for the last 8 years.

This dude, and 3 of his brothers, were standing around guarding the topless girl.



This particular dude was missing his rifle, which is supposed to be under his hands there you see. This provided the opportunity for me to do this:



We eventually made our way all the way over to Lincoln's house. That dude is huge!





He didn't move much but I'm pretty sure he blinked, but that might of been a hallucination caused from the overwhelming pain in my feet from walking so much.

One disapointment was the reflecting pool at the national mall which had NO WATER in it.





We then left Lincoln and headed East to see the other famous stuff. Nearby was the Korean War Memorial which had these spooky ghostly army-guy statues:





There was some tour guide there explaining what it was. Actually there were tours everywhere, but given that we were three guys, we really didn't pay attention to any of that, or even know what we were looking at half the time. I gotta say, when you don't read signs or have any knowledge of the place you are in, it makes things more exciting! And also, faster. Often we would say "What's this thing? Another columny domey building."

Saw this on part of the grass there:



The amount of Hockey in this town surprised me, what with it being the capital of USA and all.

You may of heard of this structure:



It's called the Clinton Memorial and is a life-size representation of his wang. But seriously, there I am drinking a Sprite "Soda" in front of the Washington Monument, which is really really big by the way. I'm talking Clinton's Wang big!

After some more torturous walking, we made it to the Smithsonian.



The Smithsonian is actually several different buildings: American History Museum, Natural History, Air + Space, Black History, Some Galleries, History of James Cromwell Movie Appearances (two buildings)...
Almost all of them close at 5:30pm however, and we arrived at 4:00pm. So, we had to pick one. We went for the American History Museum, which had just recently reopened.

Before heading there we checked out the gift shop and saw this amazing book:





You can dress Obama in any number of outfits! I didn't check if the book had a military uniform from the South during the Civil War. Hilarity!



Inside the museum we learned about all the many wars, including the War of 1812, which they assured us they decided to end because it wasn't "gelling with their key demographic", or something like that.

It was a pretty cool exhibit anyways. I found out that Abraham Lincoln's handwriting is very hard to read, and he uses the word "Negroes" a lot. Also he had a big hat. I'm talking Clinton's Wang big!

At the end of that exhibit they had a 9/11 exhibit which was weird.





Sadly that was basically all the time we had, so we missed about 98% of what the Smithsonian has to offer.

So, we decided to continue our journey east which would eventually end with the Capitol Building. I saw this on the way:



I forget what it is. I figure it's actually very famous and I'm an idiot for not knowing, but after awhile all these buildings look the same.

Eventually we finally made it!



It's really big and impressive looking. Plus this pool actually had water in it. I wanted to go inside the building but I'm pretty sure you have to be a senator or a lobbyist or some shit.



So, that was the end of our site-seeing. Sight seeing? Site seeing? Anyways, we took the Metro back to the Hotel and didn't do much else other than have some decent food at a Seafood place. I walked around DC that night, and bought a few CDs because the record store didn't have much for vinyl.

Wow this is long! I'm talking Clinton's Wang long!

The next day was a blast! We had to fly home! Things were going well on our first flight to Chicago, until they told us "oh ya, BTW we can't land. Gotta head to Indianapolis to refuel so we don't fall out of the sky. Sorry.".

So we went to Indianapolis and sat on the plane for like an hour and a half. That was boring. I watched some TV shows on my iPod though. Glad I loaded it full of a zillion TV shows!

Finally we made it to Chicago's O'Hare Airport, 3 hours late! Luckily for us, our connecting flight was also delayed, and we had about 40 minutes to make it! Also, EVERYONE ELSES flights were delayed, making this one very busy airport indeed! We basically ran throught the airport to get to our gate. Our gate was located at the bottom of a escalator, and had what seemed like a few hundred people crammed into a not very big room. Fun! It was basically a disaster. We found our flight was delayed even further, so we ran back to McDonalds to get some food, which was a good idea since I hadn't eaten anything but a milkshake all day.

We then found out our gate got moved, which was good, because it was getting pretty uncomfortable in that room.

So, tedious story short, we finally got on our plane and made our way home, about 3 and a half hours late!



I'm not sure what city this was, but it was huge:



Then we got home, and guess what, the roads in Calgary sucked. Also they lost Josh's luggage (he got it back a few days later). We had Wendy's and drove home and I was really tired.

Most photos from this post by me, the couple good ones by Josh!

More photos here:
My Flickr
Josh Flickr
Trevor Flickr

Clinton's Wang.