So far the trip has been great, even the weather’s been okay it hasn’t been cold yet, a little dreary but pretty nice.

Was hoping to get in the water today but none of the dive masters made it into the store, heh, island time. Next few days we’ll be doing a ton of diving though.

Here’s the view this morning from the top of the hotel. It was raining crazy hard for the first part of the morning but got waaaay nicer.

Wandering the streets of stone town we finally found the market. Many of the “streets” here are barely wide enough for a bicycle to cruise down.

Ugh. Morning photos.

Well, we made it. I’m not sure if I should continue to call this day 5 or day 6. We left in the morning arrived the next morning.

I believe there is a special place in Hell reserved for the person that thought it was a good idea to put a game of boxing controlled by poking the screen on the back of someone’s head. Seriously, burn. It could not have been mor annoying if it was a drum simulator.

On a slightly lighter note Dung Beetles! National Geographic had their headquarters 2 blocks from our hotel. What exhibit could be complete without a 13′ dung ball with video screens. I want one for my tv at home but I don’t think Stephanie will go for it.

The Foggy Bottom metro station. The name alone warranted a photo but it’s also one of the coolest stations I’ve seen. Reminds me of that opening scene from the original Battlestar Galactica I think it was.

Don’t go into the light!

Getting to play president for a minute. Looks like everything is going to be A-OK, poor Stephanie, she got stuck with the Nixon pose, hehe.

Today’s awesome little kid quote “daddy, I wish they still had mines today”. Overheard in the gem and mineral exhibit at the Smithsonian. There are some fairly impressive rocks here. The hope diamond was ok, but next to some of the other stones it seemed somewhat tiny. This insane emerald was one such example.

Another example of how impressive the city is by day and by night.

Got to hit two of the Smithsonian museum’s today. Natural History and Air & Space. Dinosaur bones are cool and all but c’mon, spaceships, rockets, and all sorts of classic planes from the Wright brothers on.

More than one recommendation to go to the Capitol Grille, awesome. Dinner was a feast of one of the most perfectly cooked tenderloins I’ve ever had and butter poached lobster tails, that’s right tail-S-. So yummy.

Now dinner was awesome, but desert was ridiculous. Coconut cream pie with a giant coconut butter cookie wedged into it. If there is any consistency to these restaurants (and there’s a few scattered around the country) don’t walk, run and go get yourself some of this madness.

After some much needed sleep, we managed to lumber out of the hotel around 12.  First stop the white house, a short two block walk from the hotel.  I think I’ve heard enough people over the years say how much smaller it looked in person that when I finally saw it, well, it looked about the size I was expecting.  Nice digs.

As we strolled passed the treasury I overheard a little kid say “mommy, is that a jail for money?”  After hearing about the trillions of dollars that were just given away to the banks the other day, I’m thinking no, definitely not a jail for money, apparently they don’t really care where it is, they just move it around until it disappears, then make some more…

I’m a big fan of the obelisk’s.  This one was no exception, although the evil red eyes at the top that you can see at night are a little disconcerting.  Right after we took this picture they started closing off all the streets around us.  So that was the presidential helicopter we saw flying by a few minutes ago.  The motorcade rolled on through while we were waiting and there was the man himself, heading back to the house.

There is no shortage of monuments, memorials, and other impressive stone and concrete artworks here, but this one stands out.  A 50′ statue of Martin Luther the King over looking the water.

Finally getting to see the statue from Planet of the Apes up close and personal was a treat.  Could have used a few more ape secret service guards around though.

Wandering for about 5 hours after we strolled passed it the first time, we got to see it from another vantage point in the dark.  You can’t see it very well from this shot, but the evil eyes glaring out from the top definitely give you the feeling you’re being watched.  That and all the cameras everywhere, the snipers, secret service and regular DC cops.  There’s a couple things I’ve noticed today.  DC is filled with the sound of sirens 24/7, and there are a lot of people walking around wearing sweaters and ties.  Nobody wears a tie in SF unless they work in a bank.  Glad I get to wear jeans and a t-shirt most days.

Full circle back to where we started.

Inside the Kennedy Center waiting for Handel’s Messiah to start.  Grabbed tix this morning after reading through the list of to do’s on http://washington.org/visiting/browse-dc/attractions/100-free-things-to-do, quite the useful list if you find yourself here.

Here’s the man himself, looking a little lumpy, but all things considered, not too bad.  This is a helluva building, so many different theaters, 100′ ceilings and artwork everywhere.  Totally diggable place to check out.

Ok, so it’s December 16th, quite cold and dark and we stumble across one tree in full bloom.  I’m looking forward to coming back in the spring sometime to see all the blossoms on all the trees but this was a nice way to end the day.

Tomorrow, off to the Smithsonians.

A safe but late arrival here in DC. Should be at our hotel by 4AM local time. Ugh. Tomorrow a full day of sightseeing.

There is definitely nothing Super about SuperShuttle. Our trip to the airport was so bad that Stephanie actually had to get off the shuttle for a few minutes. We would have had a smoother ride on the back of a charging rhino. Now here in DC we’ve given up waiting for our next shuttle. Lots of taxis thankfully.

Well it’s election season again and it seems like global warming is affecting this season as well. With it’s longer periods of more intense heat and bitter cold the political climate is only going to get worse, unless we do something drastic to stop it. Personally I’d love to see some emission caps on the politicians.

The endless bickering instead of policy making, the mindless discussions of what the other candidates have done wrong in their marriages. As much as it all makes for great late night tv fodder it does nothing to help us choose a good candidate for good reasons.

Looking back at some of the founding goals of each of our two parties, yes it’s a two party system, and there will be no occupy candidate as far as I can tell, it’s hard to distinguish which party is which when all you are given is a headline.

Take for example the Republican platform of 1856:
•Slavery? Against it.
•Life, liberty the pursuit of happiness? For it.
•Government funded high speed rail from coast to coast? For it.

The Democratic platform of 1856:
•Slavery? If you legally vote for it I guess it’s ok.
•Equality of rights & privileges? For it.
•Government funded communications and transportation from coast to coast? For it.

Not much has changed. Both parties want to make the country better.

Unfortunately neither party has much power to enact meaningful change when they spend all their efforts fighting with each other.

It seems like we end up picking the best of the worst not the best of the best.

The goals of each party (now that we all agree that slavery is bad) are not that different: make the country better, make peoples lives better.

Could we have anonymous debates? You only found out at the end which person said what and what party they belonged to. Would that change how they presented their message? Would they focus more on what they would do to fix the real problems? Would we then perhaps vote more based on proposed resolutions of issues rather than cartoon drawings of elephants and donkeys? Hard to say.

It would be nice, as a country, to have a political discussion that focussed on reality rather than hyperbole and ridiculousness.

Although there were more than a few scenes that didn’t just border on the ridiculous but were located smack dab in the middle of Crazy Town, USA, all in all they did a decent job keeping true to the original. Julianne Hough reminded me of a young Meg Ryan throughout the film, especially when she was grinning that goofy grin, and Kenny Wormald didn’t do a horrible job of playing Ren. This was one of the least disappointing remakes I’ve seen in a long time. The updates to the soundtrack were not over the top and try as I could to stop myself, I found my toe tapping once or twice throughout the 113 minutes.

The scenes with Ariel and her bo Chuck seemed downright creepy at times. Their actual age difference of 5 years came across as more like 10 or so. Also, the notion that you were watching 2nd or 3rd year college students play highschool kids was considerably more in your face in the remake, but I didn’t go see this film for a dose of reality. Sure the original film was nominated an Oscar, but it wasn’t for best actor, it was for best music, original song. Keep that in mind if you go see the new one and you’ll probably have a good time.

If you ever get a chance to go to the Upper Gauley for a rafting trip, TAKE IT! It is wicked awesome fun. Ask for Nate, one hell of a river guide, he really knows his stuff. http://www.gauley.com/

My buddy Brady invited me along on this trip that was supposed to be a big group of his other friends from the Columbus area, and it turned out it was me, Brady, Nate and another friend of theirs Patrick were all that made it out (for all of you that didn’t make it out, you totally suck and missed an awesome trip).

The travel portion of the trip was a bit of a nightmare. Went to sleep around 2 because I had to get a bunch of homework done and then pack (my day took an unexpected turn due to a client emergency), got up at 5 to go to the airport and there was a flight change notice waiting for me. This was just the first of many for the day. It went something like this:

• Original flight schedule SFO – HOU – CRW
• Changed at 4:29 AM SFO – HOU delayed by 2 hours, gonna miss the connection to CRW
• Got on a new flight that took me from SFO – IAH – CRW that was only going to get me in about 2 hours later, not too bad.
• Get to IAH and the flight to CRW is delayed by 3 hours, then cancelled.
• Get on a new flight from IAH – CLT – CRW and get my bag transferred over to the new carrier
• Another flight change, back onto Continental/United IAH – CRW, unfortunately my bag was now lost and I spent the next 6 hours trying to get someone to confirm that it would actually arrive with me in CRW (it had my tent, sleeping bag, etc. etc.)
• Finally got into CRW (with my bag!) and picked up the rental and headed out.

At this point it’s 12:30 and I have to be up at 7AM for our rafting trip but I only have about 1 1/2 hour trip to the river rafting place.  Here’s a tip for anyone using a GPS in a rental car in a place they’re not familiar with NEVER NEVER EVER SELECT SHORTEST ROUTE.  I didn’t realize this was basically as the crow flies and was driving on WV-13 for about 2 hours.  To call this a road would really not be accurate.  It was a single track path through the forest frequently crossed by impromptu rivers and 50′ ponds.  If I wasn’t in a 4WD vehicle I would have been totally screwed.  I finally rolled into camp around 3AM.

I’d been watching the weather for the last few weeks, and it was looking awesome, 70′s and sunny every day. The week before the trip the forecast changed to 49 and raining, then 45, then 40, ultimately it was 39 freakin’ degrees out in the morning and raining. Ok, so that part wasn’t so awesome, actually it was colder than shit and fucking hard to get out of my sleeping bag (did I mention we were supposed to be camping?). So after dragging myself outta the truck (I upgraded to a Ford Escape so I didn’t have to set up my tent, which ended up being very lucky for me considering that WV-13 fiasco) and desperately trying to find some warmth we all got geared up in our slightly smelly, cold, damp, cold wetsuits and headed out for the river. The water was around 70 degrees and felt warmer because of the air temp, that was a huge plus. The rest of the day was one amazing class III, IV or V after another, in between incredible views of the canyon we were in. If the trip had been a week or two later the hillsides would have been bright with fall colors, but it was still pretty awesome, leaves were just starting to change and the temp of the air and water created this great fog rising off the river.

Seriously amazing day on the river, HUGE features and our guide kept us rocking through all of it where people taking almost the same line moments later would get tossed from their raft.  You might be thinking “but that’s part of the fun”, no, getting tossed from your raft in a class V is a little on the terrifying side.  Staying in your raft is fun.  Admittedly a huge adrenaline rush getting tossed outta the boat but I’ve spent enough time on, under and near the water to respect it and know that it will have its way with you if it wants to.  Best to not go out of your way to get smashed on the rocks.

All the pictures you see here are all tame and don’t do the river any justice, the reason: “MacKenzie! At the top of a 3/4 mile long class 5 is not where you should be taking photos, get ready to paddle!” ~ Nate.

I know, I know…