DC

Collyn and I traveled to DC during my February break. She had been there once as a kid during the time when she lived in Philadelphia, but this was a first time for me. We got to see Brenda and her family as they were finishing up their trip when we arrived, so there was a day of overlap. Byron was in Indiana for a long time and we never visited, but as soon as he moves to D.C. we make it out. I'm not ashamed to admit that we're shallow like that.

One of the things that I have realized with Collyn and is that the pictures we take during trips don't do that good of a job of showing what we did, because we often don't document the parts that really paint a picture of the journey. We just don't think to take pictures, even though we remember to bring our cameras.

This trip in particular we do not have pictures of the following:
Going out dancing north of the city, getting all turned around despite the gps before we found the place, having a great time dancing and reconnecting with a friend who moved out there in the fall, and then driving home in a mix of snow and freezing rain on slick roads.

Having a great belated anniversary night in the city at the Washington Hilton, walking around Dupont Circle in the freezing cold having sushi appetizers before a dinner of Lobster mac and cheese for Collyn and lamb for me.

Our wonderful hosts, who let us borrow their car and drive around, or any other of the family.

Our afternoon of walking all over the mall to see the White House and presidential monuments while getting rained on.

Most of the great sculptures and amazing stuff in the Air and Space Museum.

Here is what we did take pictures of:

The view from the hotel window.


A block of aerogel from the Stardust comet capture mission at the Air and Space museum. I thought it looked like a square ghost. You can read about it and it's use here.


Collyn hiding. You will probably need to make the pic larger to find her.


The best Lindy Hop travel photo of all time. Allow me to explain: Swing dancers, when traveling, especially for dance related things like weekend events, often strike dance poses in front of city monuments. In fact, there are a couple of traveling professional instructors who make videos of themselves dancing all over some of the cities they travel to, incorporating people from the local scene and people who are passing by. What makes this picture the best is the backdrop. According to folklore the dance was named when "Shorty" Georoge Snowden, the originator of the break-away style of dancing, when asked by a reporter at the Savoy Ballroom, what dance he was doing, replied, "The Lindy Hop". Charles Lindbergh's recent crossing of the Atlantic was assumed to be the inspiration based on the headline "Lucky Lindy Hops the Atlantic" that appeared in some paper. Whether or not this is how it all came to be is debatable, but the point is this:

We're doing the lindy hop in front of the exact plane that Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. Best lindy hop travel photo of all time.



We drove out to a small town, Chesapeake Beach, to check out the bay. You can tell this isn't a California Beach, because despite the cliffs, there is snow on the ground.


Butterflies in the butterfly garden at the Museum of Natural History