Lisa and Rich do DC

For photos follow the link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90438&id=510568119&l=c2ea4bd1d9

After Regan and I were discharged from the E.R we were ferried to a nearby hotel where we spent 4 days in a bit of a daze lying down, hobbling very slowly between the hotel room, next door restaurant and the pharmacy, cleaning everything I’d inadvertently bled all over in the van (this was much easier than expected, evidently my blood has no staying power…) and wondering how we were eventually going to get out of Nashville. By the end of the week we’d got it together enough to book a couple of flights and while Regan flew home to Rhode Island I also headed north to meet up with Rich in Washington DC.

We spent a great week together and took things very easy – Rich was recharging his batteries for the rest of the trail and I could only limp for around 20 minutes before my leg told me I had to sit down. We still managed to see the sights though (see photos) and my overriding impression of these is that the White House is much smaller than it looks on TV and you aren’t really a former US president unless you have your own very large monument. DC is a cool city, with lots of funky neighbourhoods to drink coffee in or watch the occasional gay pride parade. Ate in lots of great restaurants too, on the basis that we could do this without having to walk very far and the trail has given Rich the appetite of several horses. Tuesday was Rich’s birthday so I took him to a Jenny Lewis gig and didn’t complain when we went to watch a baseball game. I actually really enjoyed the baseball in the end, especially all the theatrical organ music they play when someone does something impressive. The best bit was the mascot race – the Washington Nationals have 5 mascots in fact, 4 being former US presidents who come out and race each other around the field at the allotted time. Crazy Americans.

At the end of our trip we rented a car and drove out to Harper’s Ferry, a pretty, olde worlde town at the spiritual halfway point of the Appalachian Trail, where Rich needed to resume his hiking. Spent a lazy day wandering around the town and along the river, as well as walking along a very short section of the AT itself (although Rich didn’t see the humour in my suggestion that I could now tell people I’d “hiked the AT”). Spoilsport. After another tearful farewell Rich resumed the trek northwards and I drove back to DC for my flight to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the start of my 3 month internship with the Office of the Capital Defender.