Cherry blossom; or, I am back from DC
Apr. 4th, 2005 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI'm back! And despite the exclamation point, it's really only a whisper. I'm exhausted; it was a night flight, leaving Dulles at ten-ish and getting here at ten in the morning. I like night flights going westward, not inbound. The net result was of course that I haven't had any sleep in thirty-six hours and am getting just a tad twitchy.
Anyway! It was an interesting trip. Certainly one that will stay with me, for reasons that will become clear. It began with a trip down to London (it's much too complicated to explain why, but we flew out from Heathrow) followed by a morning flight on the Tuesday. It was without a doubt the worst flight in my experience. Not only was it insanely turbulent, with the aircraft dropping several feet like a stone every few seconds, righting itself for a few seconds, then doing it again, it was also plagued with horrible headwinds. Hence a six-hour flight became seven and a half hours, and I was stuck sitting by a pair of extremely noisy American children. I don't of course mean to imply American children are inherently more noisy than children elsewhere, only that I wasn't able to tune out their accents.
But we made it in the end. That first night was rather nice, as the city was sunny and bright and full of people; while my parents pottered around trying to get settled in, I ventured out to find a post office. They're very different over there, but I managed to dispatch a parcel of BSG discs to Ohio without major incident. Have just checked to see it did arrive, and I'm glad to see it did because the woman I talked to could not understand my accent. If I may pause for a moment to rant, I am BRITISH! I come from the country that invented the damned language! I am not that incomprehensible, and I rather think that tomorrow I will make a phone post to prove it. So there.
Later on my parents joined me in just wandering about the city. It was a lovely evening, and we walked up to Dupont Circle, which surprised me. Everything I'd heard about it suggested traffic-heavy urban ugliness, but although there was traffic, there were also wide pavements and greenery and people playing chess in the dying light. Every second person had an iPod. I really liked it.
[As a brief aside - in DC, they do not have red and green men to tell you when to cross. They have orange hands and then a white running man, but this is the good part - they tell you how long, to the second, you have to cross, and it counts down to zero at which point it turns over again. This fascinated me more than I can say.]
Also, there were bookshops. One of them particularly caught my eye because of the two rainbow flags above it, and when I saw the name - Lambda Rising - I got it. I drifted in, my parents trailing behind me, and lingered to look at books and rainbow streamers even when they'd disappeared. My mother was rather typical about it. I've told her so often that she can't work for the government and be offensive in any way, but it doesn't register. Anyway. I decided at that point I had to get back to the bookshop.
Which is easier said than done, when you're in a foreign city in volumnious wake of your parents. But it would appear luck of some sort was on my side; the next morning I woke up at quarter to six in the morning. Jet-lag, obviously; I decided to make use of it. I got dressed as quietly as possible, left a note pinned to the bathroom mirror and slipped out.
I had thought that there would be no-one about. But in the lobby, and in the streets outside, there were people going to walk, people on the phone, people peering at Blackberrys. From which I later concluded that in America, people go to work extremely early. I don't know why.
I walked back up to Dupont Circle thoroughly enjoying the morning, and obviously the bookshop was closed. I peered through the window in the manner of a girl who is well and truly closeted, and walked back. Didn't tell my parents, of course. But we went to quite a few bookshops that day, and I realised that Borders has a gay&lesbian section. The first book I found in it was Mixed Signals by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minkboylove. It made me blink a bit.
Anyway, that was the day we did the tourist thing. I'm not going to write much about the memorials, as people much better than me have written about them, but I did find them interesting and worth seeing. It was fun, especially as the weather was lovely and they were talking about the cherry blossom festival by the Tidal Basin. It irked me that we were just a few days too early for the cherry blossoms - they're expected to bloom on April 7th - but the ones that had bloomed early were lovely.
My only regret is of course that neither Leigh nor Taf were in DC this time; meeting my LJ friends makes me very, very happy, but even if I don't get to meet them, I did notice one other thing. I use LJ as a means of maintaining a network of friends all over the world, and it's beginning to show. I'm slowly losing the ability to be a real tourist, as all the places I'm likely to go to are places where I have friends, where my friends have friends, places I've heard about and not seen but not places that are entirely alien.
A case in point is Leigh's comments a few weeks ago about the DC Metro system as compared to the subway in New York. I don't like the subway system in New York because it intimidates me; it's not so much the trains and the crush of people but the constant sense that it's not really a safe place to be - you get warned so much about pickpockets and murderers and escaped alligators that you can't help but worry.
In comparison, Leigh was entirely right about the DC Metro - it's very different. It's about a third of the size and five times less complicated than the Underground, and all the stations look like they were designed to house modern art installations. They're big and atmospherically lit and the trains are quiet and modern but still wail like Underground trains. And, amazingly, you're not allowed to take food or drink down into the stations. Consequently, they're pristine, like no-one's ever walked on them. The one thing that I couldn't get a grip on was the way the stations don't seem to have names. The one we were closest to, Farragut North, has a name, but lots of the others tend to have descriptions rather than snappy appellations.
This is all the fun stuff. The reason that I called this trip interesting rather than good is yet to come.
I managed to buy my "lesbian interest" books in the end, and I even got something for Hannah, but I was pissed off with myself for hiding it. So one night, in the dark and suddenly torrential rain, Pedar and I went out for a pizza and I told him. I meant to be sensible and precise about it, and say "I'm bisexual" with eyes up, but it came out all garbled and in the end I just told him I had a girlfriend, and who she is.
And now he's not talking to me.
Well, no, that's too simplistic. He is talking to me, and I guess an outside observer wouldn't notice anything wrong, but it's there. Suddenly we're not friends any more, and it feels horrible, all wrong, like a discordant note. I don't know what to do.
The last couple of days were ruined a bit by the rain. Apparently there was six inches of water; at any rate, they put back the date of the cherry blossom festival. The return flight was just as turbulent, and when we got back home I was feeling diesmbodied from tiredness. I still am.
I love and adore you, flist. However, I cannot read all your entries for the last week. I have read some journals and I've also read the friends page for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
colleen_show, but if something important has happened, don't assume I know about it. Tell me, I want to know.
And now I go to die from tiredness, thanking you all kindly.
Anyway! It was an interesting trip. Certainly one that will stay with me, for reasons that will become clear. It began with a trip down to London (it's much too complicated to explain why, but we flew out from Heathrow) followed by a morning flight on the Tuesday. It was without a doubt the worst flight in my experience. Not only was it insanely turbulent, with the aircraft dropping several feet like a stone every few seconds, righting itself for a few seconds, then doing it again, it was also plagued with horrible headwinds. Hence a six-hour flight became seven and a half hours, and I was stuck sitting by a pair of extremely noisy American children. I don't of course mean to imply American children are inherently more noisy than children elsewhere, only that I wasn't able to tune out their accents.
But we made it in the end. That first night was rather nice, as the city was sunny and bright and full of people; while my parents pottered around trying to get settled in, I ventured out to find a post office. They're very different over there, but I managed to dispatch a parcel of BSG discs to Ohio without major incident. Have just checked to see it did arrive, and I'm glad to see it did because the woman I talked to could not understand my accent. If I may pause for a moment to rant, I am BRITISH! I come from the country that invented the damned language! I am not that incomprehensible, and I rather think that tomorrow I will make a phone post to prove it. So there.
Later on my parents joined me in just wandering about the city. It was a lovely evening, and we walked up to Dupont Circle, which surprised me. Everything I'd heard about it suggested traffic-heavy urban ugliness, but although there was traffic, there were also wide pavements and greenery and people playing chess in the dying light. Every second person had an iPod. I really liked it.
[As a brief aside - in DC, they do not have red and green men to tell you when to cross. They have orange hands and then a white running man, but this is the good part - they tell you how long, to the second, you have to cross, and it counts down to zero at which point it turns over again. This fascinated me more than I can say.]
Also, there were bookshops. One of them particularly caught my eye because of the two rainbow flags above it, and when I saw the name - Lambda Rising - I got it. I drifted in, my parents trailing behind me, and lingered to look at books and rainbow streamers even when they'd disappeared. My mother was rather typical about it. I've told her so often that she can't work for the government and be offensive in any way, but it doesn't register. Anyway. I decided at that point I had to get back to the bookshop.
Which is easier said than done, when you're in a foreign city in volumnious wake of your parents. But it would appear luck of some sort was on my side; the next morning I woke up at quarter to six in the morning. Jet-lag, obviously; I decided to make use of it. I got dressed as quietly as possible, left a note pinned to the bathroom mirror and slipped out.
I had thought that there would be no-one about. But in the lobby, and in the streets outside, there were people going to walk, people on the phone, people peering at Blackberrys. From which I later concluded that in America, people go to work extremely early. I don't know why.
I walked back up to Dupont Circle thoroughly enjoying the morning, and obviously the bookshop was closed. I peered through the window in the manner of a girl who is well and truly closeted, and walked back. Didn't tell my parents, of course. But we went to quite a few bookshops that day, and I realised that Borders has a gay&lesbian section. The first book I found in it was Mixed Signals by
minkboylove. It made me blink a bit.Anyway, that was the day we did the tourist thing. I'm not going to write much about the memorials, as people much better than me have written about them, but I did find them interesting and worth seeing. It was fun, especially as the weather was lovely and they were talking about the cherry blossom festival by the Tidal Basin. It irked me that we were just a few days too early for the cherry blossoms - they're expected to bloom on April 7th - but the ones that had bloomed early were lovely.
My only regret is of course that neither Leigh nor Taf were in DC this time; meeting my LJ friends makes me very, very happy, but even if I don't get to meet them, I did notice one other thing. I use LJ as a means of maintaining a network of friends all over the world, and it's beginning to show. I'm slowly losing the ability to be a real tourist, as all the places I'm likely to go to are places where I have friends, where my friends have friends, places I've heard about and not seen but not places that are entirely alien.
A case in point is Leigh's comments a few weeks ago about the DC Metro system as compared to the subway in New York. I don't like the subway system in New York because it intimidates me; it's not so much the trains and the crush of people but the constant sense that it's not really a safe place to be - you get warned so much about pickpockets and murderers and escaped alligators that you can't help but worry.
In comparison, Leigh was entirely right about the DC Metro - it's very different. It's about a third of the size and five times less complicated than the Underground, and all the stations look like they were designed to house modern art installations. They're big and atmospherically lit and the trains are quiet and modern but still wail like Underground trains. And, amazingly, you're not allowed to take food or drink down into the stations. Consequently, they're pristine, like no-one's ever walked on them. The one thing that I couldn't get a grip on was the way the stations don't seem to have names. The one we were closest to, Farragut North, has a name, but lots of the others tend to have descriptions rather than snappy appellations.
This is all the fun stuff. The reason that I called this trip interesting rather than good is yet to come.
I managed to buy my "lesbian interest" books in the end, and I even got something for Hannah, but I was pissed off with myself for hiding it. So one night, in the dark and suddenly torrential rain, Pedar and I went out for a pizza and I told him. I meant to be sensible and precise about it, and say "I'm bisexual" with eyes up, but it came out all garbled and in the end I just told him I had a girlfriend, and who she is.
And now he's not talking to me.
Well, no, that's too simplistic. He is talking to me, and I guess an outside observer wouldn't notice anything wrong, but it's there. Suddenly we're not friends any more, and it feels horrible, all wrong, like a discordant note. I don't know what to do.
The last couple of days were ruined a bit by the rain. Apparently there was six inches of water; at any rate, they put back the date of the cherry blossom festival. The return flight was just as turbulent, and when we got back home I was feeling diesmbodied from tiredness. I still am.
I love and adore you, flist. However, I cannot read all your entries for the last week. I have read some journals and I've also read the friends page for
colleen_show, but if something important has happened, don't assume I know about it. Tell me, I want to know.And now I go to die from tiredness, thanking you all kindly.
