Capital City Mahem

Hey Ya'll it's that time again, time for another griping episode of The Many Adventures of Stephanie!!

This weekend I am taking a little mini-road trip to our Nations Capital, Washington DC and to Philadelphia.

So last night, I mentioned that I was planning on leaving for Washington around 6am, and was kindly reminded that everyone and their grandma would be making their exodus to the Jersey shore that early on a Saturday morning, making my 5 hour commute down the Jersey Turnpike into more of a 9 or 10 hour journey. Keeping that in mind I set my alarm for 4 am and pulled out of my driveway near 4:45 in the morning. Armed with Coffee, apple slices and granola I settled in for the drive. I was listening to the 1979 radio dramatization of the Hobbit, which if you enjoy those types of books you should definitely listen to because it is hilarious!, and it had about three hours left so I wasn't worried about getting bored. I still hadn't hit any traffic so I stopped and grabbed another coffee from Starbucks and then carried on my merry way. The plan was for me to meet my "date" AKA my bosses Sister who has become a good friend of mine, who is also named Stephanie (small world right!) and will hence forth been known as BIG, at 11:15 at the center field gate. I rolled into town at 9:30. I didn't hit an ounce of traffic, not one back up other than a little delay getting over the bridge into DC and even that only lasted about 10 minutes. And to top it all off that bridge dumped me right in front of the stadium, like right on the welcome mat.

So I decided to drive around downtown Washington for a little while. I should have just parked.

First let me say that I have one of the worse sense of directions, something I think I have mentioned before, I literally could be following the GPS and not be having any troubles, but then it tells me to turn and suddenly I get distracted by all the signs and cars and scenery and before I know it I am somewhere near Topeka (that's in Kansas for all you geographically challenged folks). I did catch a glimpse of some landmarks though on my whirlwind trip through like 6 streets over and over and over again. I got so turned around and lost that my GPS was perpetually yelling "RECALCULATING" at me.

Hope you weren't planning on coming to see the Washington Monument anytime soon, it's covered head to toe with scaffolding.

After driving around in the same circle for almost and hour I finally found my way back to the stadium and to a parking garage. I was still a little early so I settled into the shadows of the gate to people watch, one of my favorite things to do!

As I was standing in the shade, two employees walked up behind me and started talking about some VIP that was coming for the game that day. First thought..... HOLY CRAP I'm going to get to meet the President and then he can totally put in a good word for me when it comes time for them to pick a new Commissioner of Baseball. BIG chose that moment to arrive so I didn't get to confirm my suspicions.  We made our way through the gate and set out to explore the stadium,

The stadium was pretty standard, without anything in particular to make it stand out from the others I have been too recently.There were tons of food choices, everything from Chili to Italian sausage. Our seats were FANTASTIC! But alas there was no President of the United States sitting next to me.

We were right off the third base line only 10 rows behind the visitors dugout and right smack dab in the blazing hot sun. And when I say blazing I actually meant standing inside a volcano burn your eyebrow hairs off hot sun. It was 92 degrees out that day, and on the Field it was closer to 100. That's right 100. My entire row didn't even make it through the whole game, they had to keep coming and going. Me I stuck it out, I escaped for haft an inning to go in search of some lemonade. The game was okay but not great the Nats were losing from early on, but one of the reasons I was excited about this game was because they do this thing called the Presidents race.

The fans, the whole city actually, really really get into this thing. And let me tell you, it is so funny. You can check out all the videos from past races here.

So BIG left during the 7th inning stretch but I stuck it out and stayed for the entire 7-1 loss. I followed the mass exodus out of the stadium and back to my car. Only to once again be stuck going around and around in circles in that dang city. The highways are under construction so every time I would make a turn that my GPS told me to, it would respond with a defiant RECALCULATING. It took me over an hour to get onto the highway and headed in the direction of Philadelphia.

But I finally made it here, in fact I've been here for a couple of hours and already the memories are building. But that dear friends, is a story for a different day.

Laters!!