sayhitojohn

Heading out the next day we passed through the Garment District and the girls had fun looking at the wide variety of fabrics.  I tried to convince Patti to buy a 'party' dress because they we only $5, not sure how that worked. We visited the 9/11 ground zero site.  While there we had some conversation with the girls about what took place and how some think they are doing Gods will when they kill those who do not profess to believe as they do.  While the Bible has been used as a pretext for violence, this method of justifying anything but defensive neccessity is not sustainable when weighed against the breadth of the text.  From the Bible we understand that submission to God and receiving Christ the Savior is the work of God alone and no amount of coaxing or duress will advance that. Building around the site continues and I thought this was an interesting shot. From there we toured out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  The statue was closed so we stayed on the boat and

Doo Dah The MegaBus. Today was mostly a travel day from DC to NYC.  That was not originally part of the plan but it turned it to be $320 cheaper for us to fly out of NYC the DC and the bus made it come together.  If we took the train that savings would have been eaten up.  However, the MegaBus starts at $1 and seat and goes up from there.  Our 4 seats were $30 total.  The first night in NYC was free and the second night was paid for by our airport savings.  The MegaBus was about like taking a train comfort-wise plus it had free wifi and power at every seat. The bus ride gave a little retreat from our DC adventure and a chance to reflect on some of what we saw.  One thing that comes to mind might be worship, but that is probably too strong, maybe veneration is a better descriptor.  There is a great deal of credit given to many men in DC as is witnessed in the memorials around the city.  Certainly much was accomplished though these people but I think what is lost is that God alone deserv

DC Day 4 - George Washington, Baseball, Apple Pie and Pat Sajak. Today, after the all you can eat breakfast buffet (of which the kids excitedly partook) we headed out to George Washingtons estate.  At Mount Vernon we walked the grounds and partook in a number of lectures and tours from which we learned a lot about Washington and life in general back in those days. We started our tour with a video presentation over which Pat Sajak presided.  I thought he did a good job.  I was chuckling as I thought about Pat being the Americana representative to the Mt. Vernon visiting world.  Wheel of Fortune is an international smash hit so I suppose it only makes sense. Washington was a bit of a technology fan and you could see this in a number things he had around the house.  For instance he had a rotisserie powered by fan off the heat exhaust from the cooking stove.  He also had a greenhouse, shown below, that he heated in the winter with ducts from the fireplace. The crowds

Day 3 of the Huth DC Adventure brought us to the White House for a 7:30 (5:30 Denver time) tour.  The tour allowed nothing but coats and cell phones which made the days logistics a little challenging.  This meant that Dad had to get up at 5:30 to get out the door so he could take the metro through a train change and drop a bag at Union Station and then backtrack a bit to meet the girls on 12th and G to make our way to the tour.  The forecast had a 90% chance of showers and did not disappoint. The White House tour was pretty unspectacular and I guess it is just a checklist item.  There were many kids there, late teens and 20's I would say.  We must have been behind the Young Republicans or something, or maybe Texans.  These girls had almost groupie affinity for G W Bush.  While viewing one particular photo she said she could just squeeze his cheeks, pretty creepy, especially for some 20 year old girl :-) After a quick grab of the backpack by me we headed off to a tour of the Capital

When I grabbed the Donald Duck screen for the last post, I saw this one that I captured a while back. We are heading off to China in the spring and I have the China Daily newsfeed in flipboard.  Every once in a while something strange rolls in.  Do you think they have an issue in the marketing department?

Day two greeted us with nice temps and very light crowds as we made our way down to the Spy Museum.  No pictures were allowed in this facility, unless you were a spy of course, so I csn only paint word pictures.  It was as interesting as folks made it out to be.  It is amazing and sad to see the number of ways that humans have devised to listen too, look at and kill people. The latest technology in the exhibit was cold war era with only a few video displays of modern cyber spying and terrorism. There was a WWII section that was rolling a Donald Duck wartime cartoon.  The whole thrust was to promote the early and accurate return of income taxes with the saying "your taxes to beat the axis".  You might note that we do not hear appeals like that any more.  War is costly in so many ways including monetarily.  In our day the government simply borrows and then monetizes it's way out of earlier debt.  It no longer needs the people's implicit, although coerced, consent to fun

We spent our first full day in our nations capital today. Patti landed us a nice deal with 5 free nights at the Residence Inn Pentagon City, right across the street from, you guessed it.  As I type this I am sitting in bed looking to the North East at the Capital Dome and if I crane my neck I can see the Washington Monument. We slept in this morning, until 5:15 Denver time and got our day rolling.   The girls enjoyed the very large breakfast buffet and especially the Belgian waffles and unlimited juice.  When then hopped the metro which the kids are old pros at from our last trip. We decided to start the trip with a tour aboard iGuides that Patti snagged off of Groupon and it was a nice way to get oriented with the city. First stop was the Capital.. As you can tell, Sunday is a nice quiet day in D.C.  The White House was also on our tour stop today.  I did not get my photo op with the President, will try again on Tuesday.   Among our stops was at the Jefferson Memorial which was a pant