Healthvues

Annie (Spike’s sister) flew in on the red-eye to travel with us cross country. She gets in at 6am and we have a full day planned. Sleep is for wimps, anyway. We first stopped at Arlington National Cemetery to visit Johnny (Andy’s dad who is buried there). Always a moving experience. We then zipped over to see the new WWII memorial, which was also very moving – seeing the monuments and the veterans. DC is always such a cool visit.

But the topper was the Pentagon. One of Spike’s dear friends Julie (Jersey shore reunion chicks) is a commander in the Navy and works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff – impressive enough in her own right – and she was able to take us on a personal tour of the Pentagon! We walked by the Secretary of Defense’s office (whatever you think of Rumsfeld, it’s still impressive to stand at his front door), visited the courtyard, ate in a special dining room and walked the famous halls and corridors. She also took us down to the 9/11 memorial (in the works) which is at the impact site. It was very strange, eery, moving, solemn… to stand at the exact point that the plane struck. Puts a lot of things into perspective. Security was impressive (a bit unnerving to stand next a guy with an AK47 with his finger on the trigger), but what do you expect? This is the seat of our defense. The Pentagon seems so big in pictures and video – and it certainly is – the biggest office building in the world, I think – but in reality, it’s much easier to navigate than one might think. It was absolutely amazing to be inside a place that is so famous and has so much history attached to it. Thanks Jules, truly an impressive day and our best to your boss, Col Gwen Bingham (hope I didn’t maul the spelling of your rank or name, um ma’am)…..

We decided to get a jump start on our westward travel, so we left Bonnie, et. Al. in the early evening to get to Roanoke, VA. The drive was pretty much uneventful, thanks to the new wiper motor (it rained the whole time) and a tankful of gas.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Westward Expansion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.