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stroll along H Street
Saturday, September 3 2016
location: near Sligo Creek Park, Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland
I was pretty sure that the coffee served matter-of-factly by Gretchen's parents had been decaf. That might be no big deal to them, but I need my coffee to contain appreciable amounts of caffeine. Fortunately, I could quickly transition to black tea, but not before experiencing a caffeine-withdrawal headache.
There would be no such problem this morning. Together, Gretchen and I walked from her parents' house into downtown Silver Spring and went to a coffee place she'd found online called Kaldi's. It's ethnically diverse, showcasing the kind of America that will soon render Donald Trumpian candidates politically impotent. The space is industrial, full of raw metal, bolts, and rivets. Unfortunately, Kaldi's is not vegan, which (for me) is real bummer during breakfast. As I've mentioned before, my egg aversion is rarely much of a problem these days; indeed, I've been so isolated from egg-devouring culture that it's probably grown more extreme. This morning at Kaldi's, though, I kept having to avert my eyes from disgusting domes of glistening white and yellow. My soy capuccino, though, was perfectly serviceable (though Kaldi's is one of those places that charges more for soy milk than it does for the kind that results from ruining the family lives of cows).
On the way to Kaldi's, we'd passed an art supplies place called Plaza Artist Materials & Picture Framing, and as we passed by it a second time, I ducked in with the idea to just get some cheap white acrylic paint. I ended up getting numerous tubes of acrylic (including one that claimed to be glow-in-the-dark. I also got tiny canvases, and (Gretchen suggested this as a gift idea for the tiny canvases) tiny easels, paint brushes, and the biggest transparent plastic right angle I've ever seen (it measured more than 12 inches on a side). I don't actually have any project for such a big right angle, but it would've come in handy for the recent solar deck brace project, and it's natural to always be fighting yesterday's war.
We had lunch at Mandalay, the Burmese restaurant which we remember to be good, though we never quite remember how good. I mostly ate some sort of salad containing batter-fried morsels of something delicious. I also got the Loose Cannon IPA, which I always have when I'm there (though I've never seen anywhere else).
Near Mandalay was a used bookstore called Silver Spring Books, and in there I soon found a few treasures: A Guide to the Birds of Venezuela (the most beautiful bird guide I've ever seen) and David Macaulay's The Way Things Work (which, strangely, describes technologies from the perspective of an extinct species of elephant). While we were there, a couple young men were there to shoot a short video based on a guitar one of them had made using a hollowed-out book as a body. The cashier was not a great natural actress, so for several minutes there the guys seemed to want Gretchen to act as a "librarian" in their video (they could sense Gretchen's natural ease and authority when in the presence in books). In the end, though, the cashier managed to do the job (or so we assumed; we left before the first cut).
Back at Gretchen's parents' place, we took our dogs in Sligo Creek Park. Along the way, we encountered a herd of at least four deer only a couple dozen feet from us just off the trail. They kept still and didn't panic as the dogs snuffled by obliviously. But on the way back, Ramona started chasing deer back and forth on the bluff to the southeast. This soon became annoying, but at some point a buck with an impressive set of antler came running down the bluff and right between Gretchen and me. Gretechen grabbed Ramona and attached a leash. Meanwhile some stranger in the park over near the playground equipment had leashed up Neville. We can't take our kids anywhere.
Back at the house, I made another hot saline preparation for my ear, though this time I applied it while taking a bath. For bathtub reading material, I'd naturally brought The Way Things Work.
Traveling separately from the Hudson Valley, our friends Susan and David had decided to drive down to Silver Spring and stay with us at Gretchen's parents' house. They arrived this afternoon and were soon on a tour of the place, which is always mind-blowing to the uninitiated (my mind was blown way back in 1988). Gretchen and I recently learned that it's over 6000 square feet in size, yet it doesn't seem quite large enough for all the artifacts it contains. In the downsize necessary to move into the 3000 square foot apartment in the Watergate, many of the artifacts will be going to museums, though a good number will be distributed to family and friends. (We'd driven down from New York in the Subaru so as to have more cargo capacity for our return trip.)
For dinner, the six of us all piled into the larger of Gretchen's parents' two cars (Gretchen had to go in the way-back) and drove down to a new vegan restaurant in the District called Fare Well. It is being run by the same people who opened the vegan baker/café called Sticky Fingers, and Gretchen's parents are actually investors in it. Part of the investment is returned as meal credits, and that was how the meal tonight was paid for. I ordered a fried seitan entrée rather similar to the one I'd had last night at Evolve, and it was similarly yummy. This was especially noticeable when eaten alongside a pasta dish, which wasn't especially good. During the meal, Gretchen kept being irritated with the dorky things I was saying, like (for example) when I almost told the waitress about my kiwi fruit issues after she asked us if we had any food allergies. I also felt like the few times I did actually talk to the waitress, I always said the worst possible thing. And I kept staring at a crinkled scar the size of a quarter on her neck, wondering if she'd been attacked by a tiny dog. Towards the end of the meal, I became increasingly impatient with the whole experience, especially the lingering dessert course. But who was I to complain? I was getting a free gourmet meal.
As is often the case after dining with Gretchen's parents, the meal was followed by a long ambling stroll through the neighborhood. My first experience with this sort of thing happened in Rhinebeck, and I've hated that village ever since. There is, of course, a lot more to recommend H Street in rapidly-gentrifying Northeast Washington, but I enjoyed fussing and complaining to those with a sympathetic ear (Susan and David) and occasionally giving Gretchen a sense of my impatience. She is firmly in her parents' camp when it comes to such strolls; evidently the love for them has a genetic component. As we passed restaurants, bars crowded with young blonde women, and ice cream shops, we often paused to look at the menu to assess what a vegan might eat there. It was excruciating, but at least the weather was almost perfect, and near the end there was even a brindle pit bull rescued from Puerto Rico to fuss over.
On the drive back to Silver Spring, we were discussing Donald Trump's chances, which Nate Silver currently has pegged at around 25%. That's less than Hillary's chances, but, as I pointed out, if there was a 25% chance of asteroid colliding with Earth some time in November, people would be a lot more freaked out than they are right now. And Donald Trump is something of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth.
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