Happy belated 4th of July to you all. I hope everyone had fun and is fully recovered by now. I shot the photo above at the fireworks show on the National Mall. The following recounts the tales of my holiday.
It all began Saturday early afternoon. My roommate, Trevor, and I were sitting in the living room watching the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest. I watched in horror as Joey Chestnut stuffed his face with 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes, breaking a world record. As most people would celebrate the holiday with burgers and dogs, I could not fathom the idea of chowing down on the bunned-goodness after witnessing such a grotesque display of food eatery. So instead, I munched on a bowl of cereal, maybe some waffles.. I don't exactly recall. I lounged around most of the day, bouncing back and forth between my computer and the television. I got caught up on Samantha Who? (new episodes are finally out again).
By about 5 p.m. I'd "finalized" my plans with Nat and Marshal, who was in from Portland visiting before his European adventures. I got ready to go, as did Trevor. We headed down to Gallery Place/Chinatown and met up with Bill by about 6:30 p.m. In an attempt to find Nat and Marshal we made our way over to the Washington Monument... a good 10 block walk from where we left the metro. Along the way we saw a scary looking dog, a person wearing sunglasses and a shirt that read "Help the blind" (though they flinched when the dog wasn't even close...) and your usual array of red, white and blue fireworks-goers. We found a nice grassy knoll right on 15th street below the Washington Monument. Perfect for viewing the fireworks and making nice pictures. Excellent, we were set. Not quite. Nat called and said, you're too low, come find us, we want to go up higher. So, Nat drags us across the Mall to higher grounds to view the fireworks, Marshal and I adventure through the crowds so I can take people pictures and we get ready to watch the flaming balls shoot into the sky from the Lincoln Memorial... at this point, the Washington Monument was no longer in our view, it was directly behind us, thus ruining my prime picture taking opportunities for the 4th.
The show lasted about 15 minutes. I wasn't all that impressed. Personally, I think Fort Vancouver puts on a way better show, but then again, it's what I'm used to. After the show, Trevor tells us that his cousin is going to a party in Capitol Hill, so we decided to make the who-knows-how-long-block walk over there. On our way, we passed many Smithsonian museums and stumbled across the Hirshhorn where On the Fly was hosting a ridiculous Flip Cup game of at least 60 people. So of course we had to join in on the fun. After about an hour or so of Flip Cuppery, we decided to head on out (more like, the Park Police were kicking us out at 10:30 p.m.). We were headed to an Irish pub in Chinatown (ironic, I know) for some more 4th of July celebrations. Along the way, we picked up four people at the Flip Cup game who decided to tag along (a brother (we'll call him Muscles) and sister (we'll call her Red) pair and a sister pair). So at this point, it's me, Bill, Nat, Marshal, Trevor and our four new friends.
We arrive at Fado, which was insanely packed, manage to grab a table for all eight of us to sit at and commence the drinking. Trevor thinks it'll be a good idea to order five car bombs for the table... At some point, Nat disappears, Marshal talks to one of the sisters, Trevor is talking to another, a group of guys is talking to Red and I'm left with Muscles (typical when you go out with a group of guys). Low and behold, he works at the Pentagon and we were hanging out with a bunch of former Air Force kids. So by this point, it's about 12:30 a.m. and our four new-found friends want to go to Georgetown (that's where they were staying), Trevor wants to follow the girls, Marshal is still pretending to be interested and I don't really care what we do. We find Nat and it turned out he'd chatted up the bouncer who happens to be very well connected in D.C. so Nat decides to stay behind and pick this guy's brain. So, the seven of us head to Georgetown.
We arrive at Gallery Place/Chinatown and head down to the trains... most of us anyway. Trevor thought it'd be a great idea to slide down the middle of the escalator hand-rails. He gets to the bottom only to find that there's a giant puddle of water. So, his ass is totally soaked and black-streaked from the rubber now.
We arrive in Georgetown, rather Foggy Bottom, at 1:30 a.m. and still have the trek to make to Wisconsin Ave. We walk into the first bar we find, Mr. Smith's. Totally packed and totally Georgetown. Ugh. I'm drinking water at this point and the rest of the group is still going strong (not to say that I was drunk... I was just dehydrated). Marshal has realized the girl he was chatting up was crazy, Trevor starts chatting up Red and the two sisters seemingly got into a spat. I'm sitting with Marshal in the corner of the bar, look over to my left only to see Trevor sucking face with Red. Marshal disappears to the bathroom (I think) and Muscles comes over to the table and sits down with me. Then, poses this question, "Well here's the awkward part," "What's that?" "Who's going home with who?" Now tell me, who asks that kind of question?! I told him that it seemed my roommate would be going home with his sister and that Marshal and I were going to head back to Nat's place since it was right across the river. I have no idea where he was going with the question considering that though he and I were talking at Fado's, on the walk to Georgetown he managed to point out every hot chick that crossed his path.. so if that was his way of hitting on me, it most definitely did not work.
By now it's about 2 a.m. and the bars are closing. Our group wants food. We go on a quest to find a Jumbo Slice that some drunk guy told us was "only 1 slice up." He was clearly focused on his slice. In our attempts, we find that one of the sister's wants to go home and wants nothing to do with her sister. So Muscles chases after sister back to their place. Red and sister start talking, Trevor wants to intervene but I stop him and Marshal, the brave Marine, wanders up Wisconsin Ave. in search of our pizza. Trevor decides he's going to go up to Five Guys and get us some burgers; we detail what we want and he heads out. Red and sister are now arguing at this point, so Red gets up says shes going to get food and tells sister to not leave. Sister leaves exactly 30 seconds later, leaving me alone in a store front window on Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown.
I'm sitting alone in this store front texting with my sister when three Indian boys come up to me telling me I look very happy. They had just seen a girl walking down the street crying hysterically, to which they asked if she was ok and of course she responded with a typical, "Leave me alone." And I tell them, of course I'm happy. I have one boy out getting me pizza and another getting me a burger! Then they tell me they want to split my meal, but me being a hungry girl at 2:30 a.m. will have none of it. So then they tell me they're on their way to find a strip club, I point them in the right direction and they head out.
Marshal comes back with two slices of pizza. Life is good. Trevor then shows up with Red and a bag of food from Five Guys. I ask him for my burger and he looks at me with a totally blank stare. The drunk ass completely forgot my burger AND bought Red a burger. Needless to say, I was unhappy with him. Then Red realizes that sister was gone. We find out she had gone back to their place, packed her bags and attempted to storm off when Muscles stopped her bags and she ran off without them. Now the night has turned into a total mess for their group of friends and personally, I wanted nothing to do with it. So Trevor decided to stay back (duh) and help Red find her friend, while Marshal and I were about to make the trek across the Key Bridge back to Rosslyn.
We made it to about 34th Street when Marshal realized we wouldn't make it into Nat's apartment and we decide to head back to my house, so he remembers seeing on the news a program called Sober Ride, where taxi services were free. For whatever reason, I thought a ride from Georgetown to my place was going to cost $35 so we decided to make the call. It's now 3:30 a.m. and the service ends at 4 a.m. but the operator reassured Marshal they would come get us, though it would take an hour. So we parked our little butts in front of Johnny Rocket's and began our wait. We made friends with the bum sitting outside after Marshal went in to buy a drink and ended up coming out with a burger and fries, which he gave to the bum, who gave them to a lady who showed up after the place had closed. One cab drove by, another and another... it was like torture watching all these cabs pass us, all the while the streets grew more empty. 4:30 a.m. comes and the lady who had taken the fries offers to drive us home and we say no thank you, because we were a good 25 minute drive out of her way. We end up taking a taxi after all..
During our 25 minute taxi ride, we discovered our cab driver was an extremely religious Muslim man. We of course got into a debate with him about drinking after we asked him why he wouldn't participate in a Sober Ride program. Definitely one of the more interesting cab rides I've had in D.C. The taxi ride ended up only costing us $16.50. Had we known, we could've been in bed by 4 a.m. instead of 5 a.m.
We woke up six-and-a-half hours later, went and picked up my sister and met Nat at Ulah for brunch to recall the story I just told you. I hope you enjoyed it.
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