THE MOST HATED WORDS IN D.C.: TRACK WORK
Following Friday’s dramatic victory by the Washington Nationals, the crowd was festive as it piled on to Green Line Metro trains at the Navy Yard station.
But when fans switched to the Red Line, they found that Metro had graciously started its weekend track work at the same time as the game ended. What should have been a 15-minute trip to suburban Maryland turned into a hour-long ordeal, complete with overcrowded shuttle buses winding their way through rainy streets of Northeast D.C.
Kevin Flynn and his son called home to change the arrangements for a pickup, only to realize the phone’s battery was dead — too many tweets about the great game!
After an agonizing 15 or 20 minutes, he turned to a woman sitting next to him to ask if he could borrow her phone. Without hesitation, she cheerfully offered her phone to the Chevy Chase resident. After a few minutes explaining to his wife, the pickup spot was changed and another family crisis was averted.
BEWARE OF FLYING SPORKS
A man was waiting for his lunch amid the food truck crowds at Farragut Square, when he witnessed the following:
A vendor was handing a customer her lunch when the plastic utensil he was trying to give her slipped out of his hand and went flying past her head onto the sidewalk.
The vendor was horrified and apologized profusely, giving her another one while the dozen or so customers outside the truck laughed at the flying spork incident.
But in the five or so minutes the observer waited for his food, no one picked up the utensil from the ground — until the man himself did as het got his lunch.
So much for “environmentally conscious” D.C.
THE BEATLES PLAYED HERE
A NoMa woman taking her usual route on her walk home from work noticed a new and exciting thing: a marker explaining the history of her Northeast neighborhood.
She had no idea that the empty auditorium she passed every day, the former Washington Coliseum, where now cars park for a hefty daily sum, was the first place the Beatles played a live show in the U.S.
She continued on her path home, loving her neighborhood even more and happy to be there — and astounded that a little historical marker could give her such satisfaction.
BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS
Metro’s S2 bus headed downtown on 16th Street was filled with the usual suit-wearing, coffee-wielding commuters one morning, but sitting near the front were two lost-looking women dressed in casual garb and holding maps and cameras — tourists.
As the bus approached K Street, the tourists began to panic.
“This is where we should get off to get to the Lincoln Memorial, and we can walk down,” one said with a hint of doubt to the other.
“Should we get off here to go to the White House? Where’s the White House? Is it close?”
When her friend didn’t answer, she looked around for an answer from the commuters, but no one looked up from their newspapers and iPhones.
Meanwhile, the White House appeared through the bus’ windshield, just two blocks in front of them.
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