THORNBERRIES AND GREERS IN D.C.--Part IV

There isn’t much interesting to say about our rendezvous with the Greers, save only that once we got to the Air and Space Museum, we had a greasy chicken meal, then Jennifer, Robert and Leda partook of ice cream while I had a nice, bitter coffee. Then we parted ways again to catch as much of this museum as we could in the two hours before they closed.

At Last! A Mars Exploration Rover!

The main exhibit I wanted to find was one I knew had to be there. Back in 1999, Jennifer and I had found a model of the Pathfinder lander, which had bounced to a screeching halt on the red regolith of Mars in 1997. They even had a cute little replica of the little cart that eventually trundled off the main lander to roll six whole feet over to a Martian boulder. So I knew in my 206 bones that the more recent Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, both of whom have been driving around on the surface of the Red Planet for over four years, had to have an earth-bound replica there for study.

And indeed they did. Standing about four feet tall, its solar panels on display like those of a gigantic beetle, the thing even had its Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) extended out where I could see it up close. The entire exhibit included a detailed mission study, as well as some of the more prominent panoramic pictures of Mars they have piped back to Earth. Like Robert before me, I found my gleeful little boy within again, eagerly going around the structure and blathering out my fund of superfluous facts about it to a cackling Jennifer. She took pictures, immortalizing my glee, along with my eternal sailboat shirt.

Thomas drools in glee and blathers on about this Mars Exploration Rover model.

We saw two other exhibits of note. One was the spacecraft known as SpaceshipOne, which hadn’t even been built yet when we first trod the Air and Space Museum nine years ago. It is famous for being the first privately funded aircraft to achieve spaceflight back on Monday, June 21, 2004.

The other exhibit was a special one they had assembled with the Kitty Hawk Flyer of the Wright Brothers. It was an impressive display, but what stays with me the most was a glass case containing Orville’s mandolin; apparently, he took up learning the instrument somewhere in his life and drove his family to distraction with his obsession with it. With my interest in learning the Latin language and corresponding tendency to drive my family to distraction, I felt a similar kinship with Orville as I had with Thomas Jefferson earlier that day.

Bloody Hunks of Foot Meat, Revisited

Alas, all good things must come to an end. The museum announced it was closing and started hurling people out the door. The escalators reversed, refusing to allow anyone else upstairs. We met up with the Greers outside and began the most arduous part of our Washington D.C. trip…the long walk to see the monuments.

The scenery was impressive, and Jennifer scored a multiplicity of pictures for us of the Washington Monument. Sweet! It was now no longer under the scaffolding like it was the first time! Otherwise, there is little to tell of this section. We walked past that great white phallus.

Ultimately, we opted out of seeing the Lincoln Memorial again because our feet were starting to feel like overcooked roasts. So instead, we went all the way out to the Jefferson Memorial, where I captured one of my favorite shots of the Tidal Basin; I scored it by setting the camera right down on the ground next to the water, and without even looking through the view-finder, I snapped the shot. The result was an image impossible for a human eye, one that magnified the ripples of the Potomac into huge waves coming at the camera, amidst a skyline that included the Washington Monument.

The Thornberries and Greers shrink to six inches tall to capture these li'l ripples on camera.

The Memorial itself was impressive, but what most captured our attention was how the guards there shushed the loud crowds of children who came into the area and showed the monument little respect. After giving it our own form of reverent silence, we hauled our tired feet back into Greer (if you’ll pardon the pun!), hoofed it back to the Metro station and piled back into our rooms for a well-deserved rest.

It is worth noting that somewhere in here, Robert smacked my face so hard that I flipped in a somersault and came back up standing again. We were visiting their room for a moment when he showed us a newspaper article. It said that the rain from the day before was the most number of inches ever received on a single day in Maryland. Robert held us responsible, because only the Travelin’ Thornberries could have timed a trip so well.

Robert smacks a blithely ignorant Thomas regarding yesterday's hostile weather.


NEXT: A torturous car trip and the long flight home.


Click for Part V