Nary a week goes by before I announce that I�m going down to see her.
An opportune coincidence finds my roommate driving down to Washington to visit her cousin for two nights. The timing is perfect and the logistics are deceptively simple. We�ll go down Thursday afternoon and drive back early Saturday morning before I have to work again.
Sounds simple, right? Right?
Between the driving and her schedule, we�ll have only a few hours together, but it seems well worth the 700 miles I�ll be putting on my odometer over the course of the weekend.
Needless to say, Gretchen is elated.
To our mutual surprise, it will only be two short weeks between visits, and time is rushing to hasten the delay. It seems only yesterday that I sat in the bus terminal watching her greyhound chariot pull out of the station, and here it�s Thursday and I�m speeding down the New Jersey Turnpike, racing towards her arms.
Clara Barton, Walt Whitman, Chesapeake House, Maryland House.
The rest stops blur together into one solid smear of travel stretching from New York to Washington. Negating the one stop for fuel, we paint a portrait of constant motion, hop-scotching through traffic patterns with methodical fury.
Avoiding the Coppers, outracing the asphalt jockeys and threading a maze of lethargic commuters, we arrive in DC before sundown. My personal record time of three hours and twenty minutes stands unbroken, but that is a conquest for another day.
Upon arriving in Washington, we promptly get lost.
My greater metropolitan navigational skills do not extend far beyond the capitol, and thus we found ourselves wandering around Northeast DC for a short period of time, attempting to comprehend the general layout.
After a twenty minute detour and some minor corrections, we finally arrived at our destination: A frat house off the campus of Catholic University.
After sharing a friendly beer with my roommate and her cousin, I left to continue my journey home. Steering my car away from the chaos of Northeast DC, I soon found the comfort of downtown�s regimental layout.
Hello, Washington monument.
Hello, American History Museum.
Hello, Jefferson memorial.
Your Kodak moments are my routine sights, but somehow I think that makes me appreciate them more.
A short half-hour later, I was back in my house, gorging myself on Outback cheese fries while spending some quality time with my mother and John Prine.
John picked the chords and wrapped a story in a tune. Mom sang along and chatted lightly, casually playing the catch-up game before eventually retiring to bed.
And shortly before midnight, I crawled under my own covers and dashed away to sleep, comfortable in the knowledge that love had wet her lips with promises of tomorrow.
