Virginia, I am sorry!

I'll be the first to admit, I am not the biggest fan of Fairfax, Virginia. This is the true location where I have spent the last few weekdays sleeping between work and scampering off to much more vibrant places like Washington D.C. and oh, the beloved, honored, New York City. But it isn't just the suburbia, anywhere USA style of this place, its a bit more than you and I think... I live more or less in HotelLand. HotelLand is every major hotel chain in America, where like most else, the swanky style of travel and staying in fashion and glory away from home has been reduced to its Cheapest Common Denomenator, the chain hotel. Mr. Marriott and Homey Hyatt would be rolling in their graves if they see how the CEOs chasing the boring buck have reduced their once stylish abodes to. A lot of business travelers, I guess I am now lumped into this lot, don't like hotels after a while because they are away and miss their family. I love my family and am just fine with being on this adventure called life, wherever it takes me so I don't agree with that. I see the hotel chain as just about the most drab place in American existence. The cheap mass manufactured feel of these places seems like Walmart designed it. The food is frozen, the pool is a small square inside, nice and safe from the elements, chlorinated too kill anything less than a 5 year old and complete with an extremely bored and extremely unnecessary lifeguard. I've dug some positives out of HotelLand, such as the willingness of the awesome cleaning ladies to feed my chocolate twice a day, the availability of free San Pellegrino (which is a new affinity for me) and the many opportunities to jump on my bed to no avail and the chance to be so isolated that I just have to write more. Yippie! But all in all, I don't spend much time here. Which brings me the purpose of this post, and that's suburbian Virginia. SubVirgin, as we will call it, is completely missing the point. Overpriced houses sit in pretty little lots behind absolutely beautiful trees shedding their leaves and strutting their multicolor warm beauty between tree needle covered runways tucked in between nicely paved roads. They are ignored. Ignored by passing, agrivated motorists that spend more time in their cars than anywhere else. I luckily have my bicycle to give me hope and happiness, but I yell and feel bad for these souls, stuck in the endless circle of driving... everywhere. I have seen traffic to no ends in Los Angeles, in Bangkok and in Houston to name a few, but this place, has it just plain bad. The daily traffic radio report is a loop, played back every day while the traffic seems to increase more and more. "Oh poor humans", I say on my bike or on my own way to work, while I sneak a meditation in, "Oh poor humans, what are you doing to yourself?" I think even the big beautiful trees of all sort look on the side of the highway and say the same. Or maybe they are even laughing, causing them to shake their leaves and nuts to the ground. Either way, the metal box with wheels promises so many so much mobility has caused these poor, poor Virginians minimal 2 hour commutes to work and back, resulting in a silence where only the trees speak and only if you listen. There are malls, bars, restaurants, all very car accessible, but all very unfruitful to real life. Time and space become real barriers and sources of real stress here, where riding the metro or the bicycle can melt Time to an opportunity for a good read pr more deep breaths and Space to a fast paced, joyous blur to be enjoyed, not overcame. So I somewhat pity you suburban Virginians. You have Cheesecake Factory and Macy's, HotelLand and Starbucks, but you have time and space stripped away from you. It is a lifestyle unsustainable in so many ways, but for the meantime, you are more than welcome to join me between your tall, happy trees and their oh so warm colors in your cool, calm evenings, while I ride my bicycle on excellent pathways to everywhere and forget your traffic, time and space are even there. (gobicyclego!) teepee

Walkington, D.C.

Heading south on Connecticut Avenue, restless mind shelves the thoughts of the day and opens up the blinds of presence to reveal my location. A brisk pace is feeding me delicately with a pleasant Thursday night’s sounds and sights. The young and earning casually dine out in hip green cafés between nibbles of stylish hors d'oeuvres while the aged and powerful hammer out deals in sealed glass coffins of spit-shined silverware only taking breaths to push in thick, rare chunks of manicured meat into their strained potbellies, already rumbling with cognac and today’s dollar bills. They are not mutually exclusive, these cliques, yet opposite and resentful towards each other on the outside. I am not-so-subtly reminded that their aims of more and better by a sign to my right side offering “Organic Corporate Catering”. The 80’s power block office shells are where they both dwell and the juxtaposing mod-cafés are where they both get their lattés. The decided and the deciding harmonizing so easily on a crisp October night, that’s what this is. A Thai upscale restaurant on my right, an art deco Passport office on my left. I am here in the nation’s (or more explicitly, the nation where I was born) capital district, Washington, D.C.

The undercurrent of power is not at first obvious, but it sneaks in as a reminder once the suits start multiplying and the number of police departments are counted. Oh, there is the Park Police, that’s nice. And the City Police, that’s good, they should be here. Capitol Police, well you gotta watch the Capitol. National Police. State Police. FBI. NSA. CIA. Thought Police. Wow. A few days of observation and now I realize that my phone calls are on a little spinning disk deep in that exact observably nondescript black office complex. But by this 8^th day here, Big Brother paranoia has passed, calmed by the short height of the buildings around me and abundance of trees I don’t usually get to look at. The generally happy presence of people simply running about their day brings humanity back in the moderately intimidating city. Every ethnicity is represented in force, a warming reminder – or confusion – of what it is to be an “American” in the most “American” in “American” cities. Which brings me to the stale Anywhere, USA Best Buy and Taco Bell stink and stickiness of American Suburbia – which happens to be well represented next to my hotel, far from where I am now, on the outer ends of the D.C. metro system – thus I prefer these every-other-evening forays into Washington. Although the changing leaves and pine scent of the ‘burbs are pleasant to wake to, the animation of the city in the director’s seat of the American national comedy is just too enticing to avoid.

My walk is only slowed chuckle at the vanity of Fitness First Health Club on my left and Laser Hair Removal on my right. My stepping continues to the beat of a Spanish voice reciting a story to a near perfect one-and-a-two and a one-and-a-two cadence. Tonight’s destination is the Lincoln memorial, a dare-not-miss landmark that I have somehow managed to avoid on the past few brief adventures into the city. But this night I refuse to be run off like Cinderella to my oversized hotel bed at the strike of 10 pm, my usual boring bedtime. Oh no, I will keep marching on to see this cherry tree chopping, stoned individual and see what he is really looking at in that big comfy rock chair.

My eyes begin to peer into the eight story office cubes only kept warm by late night newbies and their accompanying florescent lighting. I start to envision a young, overly eager Monica Lewinsky doing just as I am doing, peering into these same offices and wondering how I can get into them… so then I stop thinking. My fascination drifts to the surprising diversity of ethnic foods and bikes and fashions and street corner oddities…

A successful jaywalk maneuvered, a delightfully designed building past by. One wouldn’t really know the reflecting pool of The Mall is so close if it wasn’t for the “evacuation route” signs on Pennsylvania Avenue.

A cop there, a PhD student here and to complete the symbolic trio, a matted wool blanket covering a dread-headed soul and his whole tomorrow neatly stored in his Styrofoam donation cup.

Big Brother rears his annoying head once again as even the obscure Office of Personal Management watches me with its big electronic eye while I pick my nose on purpose. Yet I quickly shrug it off to stop and stare at the giant white, water stained monoliths of the Department of the Interior. A construction crew gently pushes me onto the street and a full moon says “oh, hello” to my little bipedal self as the night gets darker and the trees more abundant. I have found The National Path, or at least what it should be called, but it is eerily lit and creepily abandonded, making me feel like I shouldn’t have said all those nasty things about George W. Bush in college, because his CIA cronies could easily jump from that odd bush over there and push me in this dark body of pond water thus making me famous for three days or so via the back page of the Washington Post.

Aside from a creepy lampposts and large weeping willow trees providing a setting that Jack the Ripper would love, I dig the welcome respite of cool air, the repetitive blink from phallic obelisk known as the The National Monument, a few dusk and just me. Its amazing how so many public, free and open places are deserted and how many benches go unfilled while pricey bars have 30 minute waits.

The Path opens to a somber but mighty stone piller-and-fountain tribute to those who gave their service in World War II. A unique ‘whoa’ fills the sight and respect is just the tip of my thoughts but I keep wondering, dedicated to take it all in from the white marble steps below Lincoln’s feet, now in my view.

The gravel dutifully crunches below my feet and the aligned trees shed little leaves in my path and I am soon staring up at the clean white stone structure that houses Abraham Lincoln, the uhhh 4^th? President of the United States. Shame sets in at this idea. I am not really sure at all if ol’ Abe Lincoln is the 4^th president or the 9^th. Im pretty sure it’s a prime number, but there are a lot of prime numbers. (I double check to see if 4 and 9 are prime numbers and I confide myself that they are, and I am more sure of this than I am of Abe being the 4^th President of these United States of America. My shame builds as my random access memory of my brain reminds me that a friendly Swede could recite all American presidents in order from her year as an exchange student in Indiana or some state boring enough to make a young person memorize a different nation’s national leadership. Jefferson was second right? Then Adams… oh well, Abe did good and was down with abolishing slavery – which definitely earns him a statue as impressive as this one.

The stone is white, very white... almost scary white, white like noticeably bleached teeth, really white. Either no one spills coffee in this monument or the government is on top of keeping the 15 meter statue in pristine condition. I assume the later and walk closer for a better look. Its impressive, quiet and the surroundings make one consider that this man had a lot to do with the start of the healing of the horrible dark period that America gave itself, so young in its existence.

I have met up with a fellow couchsurfer by this point at the monument. This gentleman is a nice, but harmfully nerdy late thirty something that has lived in the city for a number of years and judging by how much he is talking to me, he hasn't talked to anyone in about 5 of those years. He is nice, and I agreed to just say hello, but his mouth isn't getting that I want to see Lincoln in awe not have a beer and chat. This doesn't bother me or trample my experience. A primitive part of my brain continues the colloquial light conversation over travel, hotels, blah, blah, airplanes, blah, blah, while my inner self smiles and stares out over the National Monuments reflection over the pool that is The Mall.

This is Washington D.C., where the constant dialogue of lives cannot overcome the beauty of the epicenter of a nation.

I sit down in on the steps, and everything gets quiet. The air smells different, the silence from beyond the sound comes and I take a picture by closing my eyes.

teepeegoDC

Samoa: A year ago and today.

By Tim Wimborne, Reuters Taken: 9/30/2009

I remember it with vivid detail. Ricky, Halen and I were walking from out tiny village hut towards the famed Lalomano where the tourists in the know, or more accurately, those willing to actually spend money on their vacation, boasted about staying in front of a picturesque island and perfect snorkeling. My frugal mind suggested we walk the 3 or so kilometers to the beach, which wasn't so bad, but still ended up in hitching rides to our destination. On the walk we tried our luck with promising snorkel spots only to find that small pacific island snorkel spots are jewels and must be sought for. We kept walking and finally, Samoa started to dazzle. We found the idyllic place to see the underwater kingdom. Lalomano showed us pristine white sand, never to be replicated. Leaning palm trees providing perfect shade. See-through water that invited hours of underwater enjoyment and sunburned backs. This place was Lalumano, this place was our first calm, awe inspiring experience in our Pacific-Asia trip last year.

This photo was taken by Halen, at Lalomano.Then.

This photo is the very spot where our bodies once rested, and where many lost their lives, their homes, their solidity. Now. Above: By Phil Walter, Getty Images Taken: 9/30/2009 Above: By Rick Rycroft, AP Taken: 9/30/2009 Above: (source:By Phil Walter, Getty Images Taken: 9/30/2009) This is the furthest down the road we walked to get to Lalomano - I remember this particular spot, with its abundance of Plumeria trees and a small farm on the right of this picture. Above: By Hugh Gentry, Reuters Taken: 9/30/2009 I am sure you have heard of this from the news. But thats the problem. The news runs over these catastrophes like they are of no significance. All life is valued. And with the loss of a special, special person in my life it makes it all the more touching and these events are really brought home. Thank you for reading. Everything is in change. To everyone. teepee

PS- Previous Samoa posts -

http://teepeegotravel.blogspot.com/2008/09/samoa-pics-now-online.html

http://teepeegotravel.blogspot.com/2008/09/upolo-island-samoa.html