|
| Pre Convention Gallery - Tuesday, August 29, 2006 |
ChrisReid: On Tuesday we went to Washington DC again to hit the main tourist sites.
LOAF: I bet you're not tired of these pictures of people standing around the same car at all. Not at all!
ChrisReid: The train station in Washington DC popped out right next to Joe's office, the Department of Agriculture.
LOAF: Joe is responsible for maintaining the Federal Government's collection of Bioforge memorabelia, and for scheduling meetings with Sulu.
Frosty: Who else sees them?
ChrisReid: Joe gave us a tour of the Mall.
LOAF: And over there is Hot Topic!
ChrisReid: Our first stop was the main Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. Here's the actual Spaceship One in the lobby.
LOAF: Somewhere General Yeager is quietly weeping.
Frosty: Spaceship One looks remarkably thrashed for being flown as little as it was.
ChrisReid: Blonde explains the Lunar module's functions to Frosty.
LOAF: The best CSM/LM combo was named Gumdrop and Spider. Also, there's two Wing Commander ships named Suffolk.
ChrisReid: This Smithsonian's McDonalds was also very expensive.
LOAF: Can you put a price on friendship? $8 per meat-unit.
Frosty: Deciding to tape people eating was a stroke of genius.
ChrisReid: It had a reproduction of the inside of an aircraft carrier.
LOAF: The USS Kittyhawk (forward deployed in Japan) has an exact reproduction of the Museum of American History inside it, too.
ChrisReid: Here's an Arrow.
LOAF: I think you mean an F-24 Arrow V ;-) This is actually a 'lifting body', which is a kind of X-Plane that t hey drop out of bombers for some reason.
Frosty: I don't know much about wings, but it really looks like it generates all of its lift in the wrong direction (down.)
ChrisReid: This one is a mock up of the spacelab.
LOAF: Actually, it's a real Spacelab. This is the second one built- they could have put it into orbit after the first one came down.
ChrisReid: Down in the basement of the gift shop we found the actual Enterprise used in the 1960s filming.
LOAF: It used to hang where the Arrow is... and then they had a hugely popular Star Trek exhibit... and then they got embarassed and hid it in the basement.
ChrisReid: At this point people went over to the other museums and looked at rocks. I hiked up to the capitol.
LOAF: Rocks? That's a capitol idea!
ChrisReid: I ran back down to find them and saw the Pentagon's 9/11 flag.
LOAF: This is usually the Star Spangled Banner, and I get to explain why it has 15 stripes... but they're restoring it, so, 9/11 flag. Boo.
ChrisReid: The gang was playing with their experimental air and spacecraft in the Subway.
LOAF: I got everyone a toy. Except Chris, who has a giant airliner.
Frosty: My tiny Enterprise could beat up Chris's giant tiny 737 any day of the week!
ChrisReid:
LOAF: Gutsy move -- in Washington DC, this is a Federal Crime.
ChrisReid:
LOAF: GET IT?
ChrisReid: Next up is the Washington Monument.
LOAF: I explained why it was two colors twice. Now... I won't do it again.
ChrisReid:
LOAF:
ChrisReid: We couldn't get too close to the White House because of construction and security barriers.
LOAF: And yet in just four years, Arthur C. Clark will be able to sit on a bench right there.
ChrisReid: The reflecting pool is longer than you'd think, but eventually we made it to the Lincoln Memorial.
LOAF: The United States has a lot to think about.
ChrisReid: After days of walking in the hot sun, we were all pretty exhausted.
LOAF: Especially me, due to my natural fatness.
Frosty: It would have been nice to sit on the steps even if we weren't dead tired. It's a magnificent structure.
ChrisReid: The train ride back to Baltimore was exciting. The car was packed, and some lady tried to hold the doors with her baby's stroller. The door slammed on the stroller's wheel and got stuck. Another lady and I got the doors open before the train left, but then she started screaming about how it was Frosty's fault somehow. That didn't make any sense.
LOAF: I don't actually live in Baltimore, I live in Montgomery County, which is a suburb of Washington. And yes, I helped them kill the baby and then make fun of Frosty for it.
Frosty: You guys just don't understand. If I was a subway-riding veteran like her, I'd have witnessed, firsthand on numerous occasions, babies being dragged at high speed through the tunnels as a result of subway neophytes such as myself surrendering our places aboard the cars to crazy people. I feel truly awful for not doing more to protect that poor child from his mother.
ChrisReid:
LOAF: ACE CAN HAVE ONE PIECE AND NO MORE.
Frosty: Being caught between blonde and LOAF's mom felt weird. I bailed out and ran into the kitchen to hide.
ChrisReid: Before heading to bed, we all watched the video of us playing with our spaceship toys.
LOAF: Frosty's ex is fifteen! But she's a real rocket... plane.
Frosty: 45 minutes of video, 15 of it good. Not shown: ace's magic trick.
Continue to Day E
| 
