Learning Curve...

I can still count with single digits the number of nights I have spent in my new hovel. It’s only been a month since I left Gainesville. Sometimes it seems like ages, but I haven’t accomplished many of the things I need to accomplish, so I’m glad that time isn’t flying as fast as it sometimes feels it is. There is a huge learning curve here. At least several times a day, I find out something new, or have a completely embarrassing moment when I am left looking like a naïve tourist amongst a bunch of city slickers. It’s good. It’s what I wanted.

Two things I learned recently:

1) If you drive anywhere, on any day except Sunday, you need to have about ten pounds of quarters. There is no such thing as free parking. Ever.

2) During weekends, they perform maintenance on the Metro tracks. That means delays, as I discovered yesterday when “scheduled maintenance” (according to the PA announcement at the Metro Center station) meant that my Metro journey would take twice as long as usual. This caused me to miss my long-planned Potomac cruise with the DC Gators. What can you do?

I ended up exploring the departure point for the cruise, a fabulous place called Washington Harbor (Googe Map Link HERE), wandered around the streets of Georgetown (a breathtaking area of DC), and found a nice bar inside the Georgetown Inn (Link HERE) with a reasonable happy hour. Then I wandered down P Street (I will shoot a brief video of this one day soon, and post it on my blog), crossed the bridge over the Rock Creek Parkway, and climbed on a bar stool at the Brickskellar (Link HERE). From there, I wandered up to the Dupont Circle Metro station and rode home.

I wonder what it takes to make the city feel like home? A job would help, I’m sure! In the meantime, it amazes me constantly. Today, I drove down 16th Street into the city, and took a right on P Street to Dupont Circle. There are people everywhere – riding, jogging, walking, sitting, standing – just enjoying the day. An impromptu gathering of musicians is jamming in the park. There are so many different kinds of people. I went to the ATM, and, when it asks you to select your preferred language, there are SEVEN options: English, Spanish, Portugese, German, French, Polish and Italian.

Even if it gets to feel like home, I hope I never get used to it.