Just got back from a mini-vacation down to Washington, D.C. At one point we were planning on going to Ohio for the Centerfold origami convention, but those plans fell thru. Last time we were out in Ohio, six years ago, we stopped by the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, which is pretty cool to see. Michelle asked if we could we go see the Air and Space Museum instead, since we haven’t been there in even longer. Seeing as she’s going off to college for aerospace engineering in a few weeks, and this kind of trip is what inspired her in the first place, we all thought it was a good idea.
Of course with the resurgence of the pandemic things aren’t quite back to normal yet. The Smithsonian is just opening back up, and large parts are under renovation, and they’re only letting in a limited number of people at at time, and of course you have to wear a mask. And yet again we struck out trying to get tickets to go up into the Washington Monument.
Our first stop was the Udvar-Hazy annex to the Air and Space Museum, out at Dulles Airport. This is fact much larger than the main Air and Space Museum and features some of the most famous aircraft and spacecraft of all time, including a Space Shuttle, a Blackbird, a Concorde, and the Enola Gay. There’s tons of other stuff too, from all eras of flight going back over 100 years, balloon craft, gliders, commercial, military and experimental aircraft, paraphernalia, engines, etc.
Since we drove out that morning, that was the only stop for the day. In the evening we met up with my friend John M., who lives nearby and had dinner. John is an origami artist, so it was a little like having our own min-convention. Our hotel was in Silver Springs, which is cute little urban dot in the middle of the suburbs, kinda like White Plains but with friendlier architecture and street life.
Next day we took the train into the Mall. It was a beautiful day for walking around, and we did plenty of it. Our first stop was the American History Museum. A good chunk of it was closed for renovation, particularly the cultural stuff, but there was a gallery of inaugural gowns from all the first ladies, and a collection of jazz musical instruments. We spent most of our time in the transportation section, which goes from sailing ships and horse-drawn wagons thru steam locomotives and of course automobiles.
The line for the Natural History Museum was around the block, so we skipped that and went on the National Art Gallery. Spent most of our time looking at sculptures, and paintings by Rembrandt, El Greco, and others. The last stop was the National Air and Space Museum in the mall. This of course has the Apollo 11 command module, a Lunar Lander, the Spirit of St. Louis, among others. The hall had just reopened, and more than half of it is under renovation, so it was a pretty quick visit. I was reminiscing about the first time I visited that museum as a kid, with my parents and brothers, only a month or so after it first opened in the summer of 1976. We all thought it was to coolest thing ever; I’d never imagined anything like it. Now space exploration seems to have largely fallen out of fashion, even as private space travel is becoming a real thing. Strange.
That evening we met up with John again, at a Mexican restaurant near or hotel with a large patio area like a beer garden. The food was great and after dinner John and I stayed talking late into the night. As always, he has alot of fascinating new origami stuff. He has some really innovative snakes with strips and some new polyhedra. John has gotten into making books styles as “symphonies”, with four movements, each a set or related models on a theme. This latest one, his Fifth Symphony, has tropical fish, tropical birds, some tetrahedron- and octahedron-based single-sheet polyhedra, and the last movement is complex sea creatures such as a crab, squid and nautilus. John is also to music and playing piano, so we had alot to catch up on.