Goodbye to D.C.
We had our last day here in Washington DC today, and it was filled with action and excitement. We got to sleep in a bit from previous mornings, and planned to be at the capital at 9:15 or so. I had a press conference with Ted Stevens at 10:00. Once we hit the road, we realized that the tickets for the “tour-mobile” were still back at Chris’ house. We turned around and got them, however we were not able to get into town until right at 10:00.
I went through security at the Senate Hart building, and went into Senator Steven’s office not knowing what to expect. Lydia was going to wait for me outside in the lobby. When I got there, two other journalists had arrived before me, from Anchorage news outlets. This meeting was a regular occurrence for them, but I felt way out of my league. There were about 6 of us total when we went into the senator’s office. We all setup our microphones on his desk, and hit the record button. When one of Senator Stevens’ aids introduced me as a new member of the press gallery, Stevens remembered seeing me two nights before at the Alaska dinner. I was extremely impressed, we didn’t even shake hands, he just greeted us at our table and kept moving along.
Stevens talked about the Inauguration and his roll as 4th in succession, it was simply to hide in a undisclosed location. He then told us about some Commerce Committee issues (of which he is the chairman) and then he told us about some personal investments that he had to sell, and present before the Ethics Committee. I’ll spare the details, but 45 minutes later after many questions and beatings of dead horses we moved on. The conference went about an hour and a half, and about an hour in I started to get bored.
Lydia and I left the office and our next goal was to find a pickup location for this “tour-mobile” deal that we had planned to take us around all day. After a bit of walking, and a cell phone call we were able to find one of their 15 pickup spots. With this tour, they drive you around from location to location, and if you want you can get off at designated spots. Another bus comes in 30 minutes, and you can get back on if you want, or you can wait another 30 minutes. We drove by all the stuff on capital hill that we had seen in earlier days and went straight for the monuments, none of which we had seen already.
We started with lunch at Union Station, then saw the Lincoln Memorial and the Mall from that side of town. We saw the Korean War memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, and then the White House (and visitor’s center). We hopped back on the bus during its last run, with just enough time to take us to the American History Museum an hour before it closed. There were a number of exhibits that we weren’t able to see the first time around and we got most all of them in.
We walked back to Chris’ office and did some ticket wrangling. We think our flight out early Sunday morning will be cancelled because of a bad snow storm that is supposed to hit the area tomorrow afternoon. After we got our tickets changed, we headed out to old town Annapolis and went to dinner at a *very* nice seafood restaurant where we all got some delicious crab cakes. Then it was back home to confirm ticket changes and to pack! We’ve got to leave the house very early in the morning (4:15), so its off to bed now.
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