The cat’s dropped off at the sitter, the mail is stopped for the next 10 days, and it’s time to board the Amtrak to our nation’s capital to begin our trek. We stow our bikes with some difficulty, keeping a watchful eye on the two-wheeled machines that will carry us 330 miles to PIttsburgh. “Nobody wants your bike,” a caricature of a born-and-bred Baltimorean insists. “That what we used to think,” we say to ourselves.
Becca navigates us across the national mall to our tiny hotel room in charming, gentrified Georgetown. We unpack, repack, and meet Becca’s friend William for tacos before taking a long walk around downtown as the sun sets. William, a DC native, offers some genuinely interesting insight for us tourists. We see where the January 6th insurrection happened and Black Lives Matter Plaza, where protesters of George Floyd’s murder were pepper sprayed last summer.
Nothing left to do but get some rest. Unfortunately I have that “too excited to sleep” feeling and the yuppies are still noisily dining 3 feet outside our ground floor window…