Thursday Ramble: Life in Washington DC

I live on a hilltop about 8 miles due south of the center of Washington DC, I have been here a little over 16 years.  I am here because I wanted to live in a major city, to have access to a good public transit system (in other words a subway system.) We do enjoy it here. 

I moved here a month before the inauguration of Barack Obama as President. At the time, my office was a block away from the White House, the Presidential Reviewing Stand for the Inaugural Parade was under construction in the park behind my office. Someone in W's White House missed the protocol of Blair House being available to the incoming First Family in the month before the inauguration and booked it full. Shortly after I moved into my office, the Obamas moved into the Hay Adams Hotel, a block west of my office window. I had enjoyed a Lemon-Drop Martini and smoked salmon the bar there after my interview for the job a couple of months earlier.  It was fun watching the motorcades come and go. There is metered parking along the street.  Security was concerned about parked cars and the motorcade and the city didn't want to give up the parking revenue for a month. So the Secret Service rented a fleet of cars, and filled all of the spaces, 24 hours a day, for a month, feeding the parking meters so they could control who was parked there. 

I was surprised when the security barriers went up for the official events.  We were being told that the office would be open and we were expected to go to work on inauguration day.  We had a rooftop terrace, people were excited about watching the parade pass by a block away. To avoid the crowds some planned to sleep in their offices the night before. Then the Secret Service announced that they would search the building and secure the doors a couple of days before the inauguration. The office was closed by executive order.  

So what do you do when an extra 100,000 or 200,000 people are expected in town for a few hours and many of whom will want to be on their phones or streaming video? You bring in extra phone towers, like the one above.  It is self contained, with its own power supply.  My guess is as soon as the inauguration is over, it will be on trucks headed to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. 

I have been here through four inaugurations, soon to be a fifth. I have never had tickets, never gone into the city that day. The Pope visited a few years ago, with Mass in a church a couple of blocks from my office, we were closed that day.  

It is an interesting city. You never know who you are going to bump into, or what world leaders is going to go by on the street.  Presidential Motorcades are the largest, with more motorcycles, always a press buss and an emergency medical vehicle in the motorcade.  The Vice President usually does not have a press bus or an ambulance.  Still it is exciting to see them pass by. For the first four years I worked here, they literally passed under my office window. 

The Presidential White Top Helicopters are a common sight around town.  When the President is on them, there is more than one in the flight.  If there is only one, it someone other than the President, or they are just moving from place to place.  One of the flight paths to Andrews Air Force Base comes south over the river and turns left at the Bridge that we live just south of.