A Bright Day

A bright day, cool and windy, in Washington DC.  I cycled early, but for just a short ride because I felt quite cold.  I rode to the bottom of the local hill, turned and rode up the entire hill at a brisk warming pace, then finished with an easy ride downhill and downwind.  With a clear night, temperatures dropped below 5C, and I don't have clothes with me for those temperatures.  I did not want to wait until later, for warmer conditions, for two reasons.  First, on a nice weekend day the bikeways will get quite crowded during the mid-day.  Second, I did not know Gus' schedule other than that, coming from Denver, he would not arrive early morning.

He will arrive late afternoon, in fact, if his plane ever takes off (I watch its departure time slip by 10 minutes and then additional 10s of minutes as I write this).  I think he flew successfully from Gunnison to Denver.  As an airline employee, he gets a certain amount of 'free' stand-by travel, but I think he didn't know his overall schedule until he checked in for his first flight this morning.

If we have time this evening, we may take the metro toward the Washington mall and then walk to the Vietnam Memorial.  Gus has never seen it, and wondered what kind of memorial could properly represent that time and that event.  I told him he will understand when he sees it.  I read about a concert today, free, at the Lincoln monument, to commemorate the open-air performance that Marion Anderson gave there on easter sunday 1939 after the DAR refused to let her perform for an integrated audience in their Constitution Hall.  Unfortunately, the concert today will end before Gus and I could get down there.   

We will have Monday and Wednesday for exploring.  I will go back to Baltimore for Antarctic Treaty meetings on Tuesday, and both of us leave on Thursday.   I see that Gus' plane has left the gate!