Chiling Out

My daughter stands beside a mural on a wall outside of Ben's Chili Bowl. She recognized the former president and First Lady, but had no clue as to who Prince and Muhammad Ali were. I blame her international lifestyle for this cultural oversight...

As our current stint in the DMV begins to wind down, we probably won't be making too many more weekend visits to D.C. in the time we have remaining. This Saturday, then, was a chance to tick off a few boxes from the Things Left to Do checklist, as Amber and I took the Metro to U Street to have lunch at one of the city's most famous dining institutions, Ben's Chili Bowl:

I ordered the signature Original Chili Half-Smoke, while my daughter had a chicken sandwich (not pictured) and a small Ben's Famous Chili Bowl. The two of us shared an order of chili cheese fries:

Here's Amber eating that chicken sandwich. The food was good and deserving of its reputation, though eating such meals on a regular basis would probably result in a shorter lifespan:

Having been around since 1958, the restaurant has seen many celebrities pass through its doors, including the previous First Family (Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia):

The alley next to the restaurant is named after the diner's founder, the late Ben Ali. One wall of the alley features this baseball-themed mural, featuring the legendary Negro National League club Homestead Grays (though based in Pittsburgh, the team also played a number of its home games at Griffith Stadium, home of the American League's Washington Senators). Because of baseball's notorious color line, Grays stars such as Josh Gibson were denied the opportunity to test their skills in the major leagues:

Next door to the Ben's Chili Bowl is the Lincoln Theatre, founded in 1922. Many legendary African-American performers such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan have graced the theater's stage:

https://washington.org/find-dc-listings/lincoln-theatre

The U Street area is a prime example of gentrification, the uniquely American phenomenon whereby white people move into blighted minority areas to buy up apartments, in the process bringing in trendy clubs, restaurants and shops (while at the same time driving out with higher and higher rents the original inhabitants of the community). One example of the results of gentrification is the bar/bookstore/cafe/event space/restaurant Busboys and Poets. My daughter debated whether or not to jump on the Marie Kondō 近藤麻理恵 bandwagon. Apparently the book didn't spark enough joy because she opted not to buy it:

From Busboys and Poets we made our way through some progressively upscale neighborhoods to Meridian Hill Park, an urban park administered by the National Park Service. While the park is laid out in an attractive terraced arrangement (and seems to be enjoyed by area residents), I was disappointed that the waterfalls and reflecting pool were bereft of water due to a broken pipe:

The park has a small though odd collection of statues (why is there one of James Buchanan, almost universally regarded as the worst president in U.S. history, though the current occupant...never mind). Here I am looking up at Dante Alighieri (of Divine Comedy fame)...:

...while Amber poses with Joan of Arc:

From the park, we rode a bus to McPherson Square. Before getting on the subway, we took a 奶茶 break at Gòng Chá 貢茶, a Taiwanese drink shop franchise founded in Kāohsiúng 高雄 in 2006:

Earlier in the week (on Friday, to be exact), I traveled into Washington to drop off our Ethiopian visa applications. Afterward, I took a walk in the heat and humidity to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (which, in conjunction with the Freer Gallery of Art, is my favorite museum in the District). My most recent visit was in mid-April with Amber. This time, the famous Peacock Room had been restocked with blue and white porcelain pieces:

On the other hand, the fascinating Encountering the Buddha exhibit is closed temporarily. Empresses of China's Forbidden City, however, is still going strong. One can never get enough of lacquerware...:

...and Tibetan Buddhist images:

The exhibition had nothing but positive things to say about the notorious Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后. Despite her conservative resistance to reforms that played a large role in China being dominated by the Western powers and Japan, she's apparently been the object of a sympathetic feminist reassessment in recent years. I tend to agree with one critic's comment that "rewriting Cixi as Catherine the Great or Margaret Thatcher is a poor bargain: the gain of an illusory icon at the expense of historical sense":

With the onset of warm weather, I've been going for walks in the local cemetery after dinner. No matter how often I stroll through, I'm always discovering things I hadn't noticed before, like this trio of gravestones dating from the 1860's:

Which leads one to wonder what walking opportunities will be available in Addis Ababa...

And I'll close this latest post off with a rant. What is it about the current generation of travelers and their (quixotic) quests to get off the "beaten path", avoid "touristy" places and have "authentic" experiences? I used to comment fairly regularly on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum regarding Japan and Taiwan-related queries, but lately it seems (at least in regards to Japan) that posters are only asking about the three topics listed above. As I've pointed out on several occasions (both here and on Thorn Tree), Japan is groaning under the weight of foreign tourism - a record 30 million visited in 2018, with even more expected this year. These people who want to visit places like Kyōto 京都, Kōya-san 高野山 and so on seem to want to have their proverbial ケーキ's and to eat them, too, by avoiding the touristy spots, getting off the beaten path and having authen...ad nauseum. What they don't seem to realize, or what they don't want to face, is that they are the reason why so many famous places in Japan have become "touristy", i.e. full of people from Western countries just like themselves. Because I'm now eligible for senior discounts at some places, I can now reminisce about those days long ago when my presence on the train between Ōtsuki 大月 and Kawaguchi-ko 河口湖 was a source of great excitement to a group of traveling elementary school students; when junior high school students asked for my autograph and to pose for photos with me in Nikkō 日光; when I was invited to join in on the Bon Festival お盆 proceedings in the town of Kanra 甘楽 in Gunma Prefecture 群馬県; when my ex-wife and I practically had the mountain to ourselves one afternoon at Fushimi Inari-Taisha 伏見稲荷大社; when I was virtually the only white person checking out what was on offer at Kyoto's Nishiki Market 錦市場; and so on and so on. The travelers on LP and elsewhere desperate to avoid the hordes of tourists resembling themselves in all of Japan's well-trodden sightseeing spots have only to look into the nearest mirror (or take a selfie) to identify the cause of why it seems so hard these days to have that all-important "authentic" experience.

Trailing Off...

That's my daughter on the far left, being recognized along with other students for her perfect attendance during the graduation ceremony for her Chinese school (she studied traditional Chinese characters). Of course, her perfect attendance was the result of parental enforcement, as Amber would've preferred spending her Sunday afternoons in her room, doing whatever teenage girls do on their electronic devices...

I came back on Thursday evening from several days in the other Washington to find the power out in our apartment complex due to a brief but violent windstorm that had blown through earlier that day. We ended up staying the night at a nearby hotel so I could have a hot shower after spending nearly five hours in an airplane, and for our daughter to get some sleep before school the next day. The electricity didn't come back on until sometime around four o'clock on Friday morning. Here's a short video of the storm pounding our living room video that was taken by my wife...:

...and a photo taken by my daughter, showing what the hallway looked like after the power had gone out (that ghostly spectre is my ሚስት:

The reason for missing an entire week of class was for family reasons, but suffice it to say that as a result, any chance I had of passing Amharic is pretty much moot by this point. It's been a struggle for a number of reasons, including a host of medical issues plus the month-long government shutdown around Christmas/New Year's, but there are far more important things to consider these days than getting a certain score on an exam. I'm confident we will be going to Addis Ababa on time regardless, and I feel that I have enough of a grasp of the language to handle daily communication. In the grand scheme of things, what has happened re Amharic study will be pretty insignificant.

This past weekend was Memorial Day, meaning a three-day holiday. Saturday being the last day we would have use of a car that we had been "keeping" for some friends of ours until they could sell it, I decided to do something I hadn't done in a while, namely go for a long hike. And so I drove into Maryland via the District of Columbia to the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. Almost seven years ago my family and I went there to ride on a mule-drawn canal boat and to see the Great Falls of the Potomac River. This time my intentions would be somewhat more ambitious. After parking the car, I passed by the 1828 Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center:

Just as I did with Amber and Shu-E back in September 2012, I took a side trip over a pedestrian bridge to the Great Falls Overlook on Olmsted Island:

The overlook provides a tremendous view of the Great Falls, and makes clear why it was necessary in the early 19th century to construct a canal going to Washington, D.C.:

The real hiking commenced after checking out the view. Leaving the island and returning to the canal towpath, I soon turned right onto the 1.7-mile (2.7 kilometers) Billy Goat Trail A:

It soon became clear why my hiking guide describes the route as "difficult". While I don't know how the Billy Goat Trail received its name, only a mountain goat would have an easy time scrambling over all the narrow-edged boulders strewn throughout the path:

The view I had while eating lunch:

The most challenging part of Trail A was this 50-foot (15 meters) climb along a sloping cliff face. There were no guide ropes, and it was a matter of finding handholds in the rocks while making sure my feet weren't going to slip. At least I was heading up, which looked somewhat easier than having to descend, like these people were doing (the good weather and the holiday weekend no doubt brought out the crowds on Saturday). Considering my track record, when it came my turn to ascend, I made my way up very carefully!:

I made it back to the towpath without incident, then continued southeast to Billy Goat Trail B. While it had its fair share of boulders, overall B was a much gentler path:

An eerie moment while on the B Trail was when I came across this baby stroller standing just off the path. Perhaps the family left it there to venture into the forest, but there were no obvious side trails or paths that would've led down to the water. Also, the stroller appeared to have all the accoutrements parents bring with them, such as sippy bottles and toys. And if that wasn't unsettling, there was a creepy-looking guy resembling Old Man Marley from Home Alone who passed by me a couple of times on the looped trail, all the while glaring into my soul with an intensely disturbed gaze:

Back on the towpath of the old canal, and heading back in the direction of the visitor center:

I passed by a lot of wildlife along the towpath:

Soon after encountering the heron, I crossed the canal on a bridge and headed uphill to a wide path, before turning right onto the Valley Trail. This path in turn led to the Gold Mine Loop and the ruins of the Maryland Mine. Following the discovery of specks of gold by a Union soldier during the Civil War, the Great Falls area experienced a gold rush. Several mine shafts were drilled, but profits were minimal, and gold fever eventually dissipated. This processing mill is all that remains - the wispy streaks are the result of trying to take a photo through a chainlink fence, and do not indicate paranormal activity:

While there wasn't much to see, there were very few hikers on these trails, making for a peaceful walk (except for the sounds of traffic from MacArthur Boulevard, and the overhead jets flying into and out of Reagan National Airport). If I understood my guidebook correctly, the section I was walking on in the below photo was once part of the route of the Washington and Great Falls Railroad:

All in all, it was a pretty good hike and it felt great to be out in the woods again. I couldn't have asked for better weather, with the high in Potomac being a warm 82°F (28°C). I walked for more than 5½ hours, and covered a distance of 8.2 miles (13.4 kilometers), according to my hiking guide. And my legs were feeling it the next day!

The next day was pretty quiet (and my leg muscles were somewhat sore), with the only activity being Amber and I walking to a nearby park to play a round of miniature golf. On Memorial Day Monday, however, legs be damned, I dusted off the bike (literally) and took it for a ride along the Washington & Old Dominion Trail. Knowing that I would be very rusty, I set a time limit for myself of 30 minutes' riding in one direction. Going was no problem; coming back, however, my knees quickly gave out, a reminder of how old and/or out of shape I've become. At least the leisurely pace of the return ride allowed for some photo snaps, like this one of this hunky stud muffin at the thirty-minute point, sporting his off-the-rack Carrefour T-shirt while posing next to his second-hand non-performance machine:

A community garden along the bike path:

I just can't seem to get away from reminders of work:

My extremely modest goal is to complete this 16-mile (26 kilometers) loop before we depart for Ethiopia. Considering the state of my knees after the day's short 11.4 mile (18.3 kilometers) ride, I might have better success walking the trail:

A man practicing the sax by a stream. This scene recalled the many times I would see (and hear) musicians practicing under bridges in Tōkyō 東京:

And in other recent news of note...

As on a Darkling Plain (Wendy M. Ross, 2006), an ukiyo-e 浮世絵-inspired porcelain tile artwork on the streets of Clarendon:

Roses in bloom at the Bon Air Park Rose Garden in Arlington:

We've had a lot of lightning-and-thunder storms recently (see above and below), but I'm even more intrigued by just what kind of bird feels the need to communicate loudly just after midnight:

At her graduation ceremony Zhī-huì was also honored for success selling lemonade (!) and doing well in a speech contest. My daughter has never hidden her dislike for having to spend two hours in a classroom on Sunday afternoons learning the traditional characters 繁体字 still used in Taiwan, but while she's fluent when she comes to speaking Mandarin, she struggles with reading and writing. A functional illiterate, in other words. Someday she will thank us for this, probably around her sophomore year in college when she'll "rediscover" her Taiwanese roots in her Asian Studies class:

With my sister and nephew at Kona Kitchen in Lynnwood, Washington:

This past Saturday evening/Sunday morning saw an impressive display of lightning. This video was taken from our balcony at around 0030 hours on Sunday:

Amber's 7th-grade band gave a concert on the day after Memorial Day, and my wife and I were there to lend our support:

I tried to upload a thirty-second clip of the orchestra performing the Colonel Bogey March, but apparently even that short snippet was too much for Blogger to handle, so I've posted it instead to my Facebook page. For the rest of you, here's the classic rendition, from my favorite film of all time: