Culture shock DC style

Oh my goodness, we leave the world we know for a few months and it went kooky. Where did the extra 10,000,000 people come from on the DC beltway? I will tell you a secret, in a few months you can become a traffic wimp. Without our all important FastPass, I think we went through 100 quarters in a weeks time. Lucky for us our friends were gentle and took great care of us.


I don't remember the 495/267 intersection being this bad

We only had time to visit a few of our friends. The list would include:
Laurie, Layla the Brave, Kevin, Lisa, Larry, Sandy, Dan, Bob, Ann, John, Beth, Sue, Sue, Sue, Gary, Jen, Doug, Tom, Deb, Fran, and of course Sammy the Pug. If we didn't mention you it's because we are bad people with bad memories and we apologize.

While we had many tasks planned for the week, we did get to see some new things. We hit a great new restaurant downtown called Temperance Hall. Good brunch with a classy neighborhood bar feel. Doug worked on the menu and did a wonderful job.


3634 Georgia Ave NW is a great place to meet.


The gang having a little brunch.

In fact I think we gained 10 pounds from all the fantastic meals. We were lucky enough to be in town for a dinner party hosted by John and Beth. Beth created food to die for and John just kept opening incredible wines as a complement to the meal. James couldn't decide what he liked best; the food, the wine, the company or the gorgeous kitchen with copper pots everywhere. He was in culinary overload.

The weather was another story. From sunny North Carolina to cold, snowy, windy, Virginia. Who knew that a couple hundred miles could make such a difference. Our blood has thinned out quickly and horror of horrors, we had to find our socks.


Ole Blue with a fresh coat of the white stuff.

We had other more mundane tasks to accomplish on this trip north. Fun things like getting our taxes done, going to the DMV, getting our hair cut, making sure we still had jobs to come back to. You know little things like that.

We spent a good amount of our time trying to figure out where we would live after bringing the boat back north. Since we had downsized our lives, we could choose any kind of lifestyle we wanted. Did we want to buy something or rent? If we rented, where and what kind of unit? Way too many choices that made us nightmare clients for our realtor Sue Fitzhugh. She had seen our kind before and Sue was great to show us about 200 apartments and townhouses in just a couple of days. We think that Reston will be the where we hang our hat, but we have not yet pinned down the exact location. We will leave that for when we return.

For now, we have a boat to get ready. We need to resupply the food and drink, as well as give Helios a quick shakedown to check the idle systems. The trip north should prove to be a great time. With room for crew, we look forward to having some visitors. Hopefully the weather will be nicer to us then it was on the way down. Knock on wood.

Right now we are snug in our bed in NC reading the Sunday paper and watching HGTV. While there is a lot to do to get ready, you don't want to push yourself to hard.

Enjoy,
P & J