Chapter DC: Hot off the plane and head first into "The Continent"

The next month and a half progressed like a rapid paced gyro that we prematurely set in motion sometime last December.

Coincidentally our travel plans put us on a suspiciously similar path as that flamboyant rainbow explosion we can all agree is the gay pride parade series d’USA.  You’d have thought we’d planned out our continental game of hop-scotch with the intention of simply tailing beautiful men with big bouffants and bigger platform hooker boots.

When I landed in Washington, DC I was greeted with open arms, a quizzical look (I was holding a leash with a cat on the other end), and a timetable that included Ultimate Frisbee practice, team brunch, Petco, inner-tubing, and the added option of rainbow flag waving to disco music. There was enough gay in every major metropolitan town from DC to SF that it left me thinking, is that the same bald man sporting a fuzzy pink cock ring, arm boots, and Chihuahua with bedazzled eye-lashes that I saw in NYC? No, I think the tattoo on his lower back is a tad different.  

Abrupt Topic Change:

Attending my sister’s annual inner tubing trip was a bit of a bucket list item. I’ve heard about the amazingness of this trip for a couple of years now. No one can put together a wastey face, pastey ass, group event like a bunch of over worked weekend warriors whose job it is to organize people around something arbitrary.  So, while Hamm settled into her new hunting ground with her usual air of ownership and unavailability, I prepared for the wild torrents of the Potomac River. 

  If you’ve ever been white water rafting, river kayaking, or canoeing, then you know that it takes a certain level of athleticism, dexterity, and spatial awareness to safely and effectively reach your down-stream destination. Inner-tubing has, roughly speaking, no similarities with these sports. In fashion of any proper mid-eighties frat movie, tubing’s only semblance of a river sport would stem from that moment when the river water, politely suggesting you head down stream, gets tossed about when some drunk asshole makes an attempt at standing on their tube, while simultaneously shot-gunning a beer and singing the national anthem just before going head long into one of the ten coolers attached to the flotilla. But that’s just what I’ve come to expect from my sister’s husband. I love him.

And then we rolled around DC like a bike gang of 9 yr olds in the 1950s. We ruled the town.