The Pilgrim-Tourist

Quick update: Yes, I've spent most of this week getting my behind kicked by the nasty cold virus going around. Don't be me, suck it up and get some Dayquil and Nyquil, it will make life much easier.


Exactly two weeks from now, I will be in Washington, DC. Probably looking for lunch.

This is my very first trip to the Nation's Capital by my lonesome self. I've been twice before, but both times I was with my family and the most recent (in 2003) we were in town for five hours before heading for Backwoods, VA and my sister's college graduation. My mother asked where I wanted to go in DC in the five hours we had there, and as a brand-spanking new Episcopalian, I immediately chimed, "National Cathedral!"

And so my parents and I traveled to the nation's Cathedral, and pretty much as soon as we got in the door and I saw that big ol' altar and bowed to it, I knew I'd made a misteak. Mom was cool and all with the Cathedral, and had toured it on one of her previous trips, and she'd known intellectually I'd switched churches, but her baby daughter was CROSSING HERSELF OHEMGEE!

It was a kind of awkward tour, until we got into the gift shop. Because if there's one thing I've inherited from my mother, it's the ability to find inappropriate humor in all places. No, I won't tell you what tchotchkie had my mother and I giggling madly and yelling, "Da! DAD! Get over here and look at this!". Because then they won't let me back in for the Investiture.

The important thing is that on this trip, my mother will be about 3000 miles away. And I will be navigating the Metro without the aid of my father's Metro-map t-shirt. And that means I can go pretty much wherever I want to go.

(The astute will note that I have made no mention of the Episcopal Majority meeting, which begins exactly two weeks from today in DC. Because I'm not going. Damnit, I am flying 3000 miles across the country on a financially-ill-advised field trip, to a city with a wealth of museusm filled with cultural and national treasures that provide free admission. Free national treasures, or $25 to sit in a parish hall. Hmmm.)