Air & Space.....

The next morning my mom and I took a bagful of random stuff to USPS and mailed it to NZ. Considering the sprained ankle, the initial weight of my bag that I'd have to carry on my back, and the fact that we had done a decent amount of shopping I had to mail some of it home.

We then returned to the hotel where I rested and iced my ankle again before wrapping it up. Then the hotel shuttle kindly dropped us off at the metro station, embarrassingly only three blocks away from the hotel. But with a badly sprained ankle mom was echoing the doctors orders when she said, "No, we're going to take the shuttle". I rolled my eyes and acquiesced. She was right but I didn't want to admit it. :) Once there we waited for a few minutes and then boarded the metro bound for the city center. We got off at Judiciary Square and found that the exit we needed to put us exactly where Meredith, Meegan and Jess would pick us up was closed! So I hobbled to the other end of the station and up the escalator that was thankfully, running. We were familiar with this particular metro location as we had walked this exact path the day before on the way to the Library of Congress. With experience on our side we were able to take as few steps as possible to walk a couple blocks to the other entrance. Upon arriving we started scanning for their vehicle but didn't see it. After a few minutes they zipped up to the curb and we piled in, carefully of course. They saw that the entrance had been closed and so drove over to the other one where we did come out. Ships passing in the night. With that sorted we set off for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. After going through security we secured a wheelchair for me. I handed over my NZ driver's license as collateral and plopped myself into the chair. Even at that point, there hadn't been a ridiculous amount of walking, I was happy to be able to sit down. :) My brother, Jess, was a good sport and pushed me all around and stopped wherever I wanted. Aw. I know, right? A little sibling bonding time. :) Air & Space was nothing short of incredible. We stayed for a couple hours but you could spend days taking in all the planes, engines, shuttles, models and related equipment.

I was most excited to see the Spirit of St. Louis: the famous aircraft that Charles Lindbergh piloted from New York to Paris in 1927. I recently finished a brilliant tome by Bill Bryson called One Summer, America 1927 where he recounts the lead up to this famous flight in addition to other historical highlights of that particular summer. A must read! With this in mind I was very anxious to see this plane. We wheeled our way around the first floor and then took the elevator up to the second. And there it was. My initial reaction was that it was all so anticlimactic. The plane looked as though it was a model of a plane rather than the plane itself. It was covered in fabric skin and looked as if it wouldn't survive a loop around the National Mall let alone make it safely across the Atlantic Ocean. Incredible!!