Mr. Fred Goes To Washington

Well, USNA was... fun, I guess. Extremely exhausting, but fun.

We left RMC Thursday night, expecting to get to USNA around 0530 the next morning.. only to get there almost at 0900. The lovely GPS system was all messed-up, and we got lost. Yay. After paying for breakfast (instead of getting it from the USNA mess hall) we got to board those ugly yellow busses with our instruments and, for some of us, our kit (some wore their uniforms on the way, others decided to get changed when we got there), to go to Washington, where we played at the Canadian Embassy. Usually, apparently, we play outside and draw a huge crowd (people clad in British line infantry uniforms playing loud music would do that, a few blocks from the Capitol), but it was raining like mad and our uniforms (like our instruments) don't exactly like the rain, so we played inside, to a tiny little crowd. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't awesome either. The Ambassador wasn't even there!

Anyway, after the show we visited the embassy (I got a good picture of me on the top floor with the Capitol as the background) and saw some cool art, and then headed off into town. One of my friends and I wanted to go visit the National Gallery, but the rest of our happy band of explorers don't like art, so we headed off in town, had a late lunch (I take offense to the idea of Americans having a "lumberjack" hamburger) and then wandered around in the rain. I got a few pictures in front of federal buildings, a picture of the poker (the Washington monument), and... yeah, that was about it. Then we went to the Holocaust Museum.

That museum doesn't deserve the name of museum; it's more like a memorial. I didn't learn anything (except a bit about some village that got erased from the map because they helped the Jews) but they had some interesting artefacts, like actual bunks from Auschwitz. Some of the parts of the exhibit made me a bit queazy, but... yeah. It's a place that's worth visiting if you're in DC, but don't bother going to Washington just to see it.

Oh, and I am among the few people who have done a 4-point turn on a major downtown DC street, complete with police blocking the street, ON A BUS. It was fun.

Saturday was cool. We got to watch Navy almost win against Delaware, but because the refs hate America, Delaware won. It was still a lot of fun, and the atmosphere (for most of the game) was pretty electric. The stadium is bigger than some CFL stadiums, and it was at least as packed as the Als games!

What was REALLY fun, was the tailgate party. We played at various spots, and then got to the Class of '69 tent, where they were really, really nice and fed us hotdogs and hamburgers, on top of getting us beer and other alcohol. The old boys were really cool, too. We didn't stay long, because we had to go play elsewhere (bleh) but I got a nice plastic cup as a souvenir. We also went to the Class of '58 tent, where we got more beer (including by some guy who was emptying his cooler and gave me and some of my friends about 3 cans in 5 minutes), tons more food, and where the alumni's wives treated us like they were our grandmothers or something, feeding us more food than even I could eat.

Everyone at the tailgate party was really nice and seemed to really enjoy us being there, so it was great.

The trip back, on Sunday morning, was pretty uneventful. I tried cheesecake poppers from Arby's, which were amazingly good.

Anyway, I can't really think of anything else to say...

Stay frosty, RMC.