We visited my friends from San Francisco while in DC: Josh and Rona who were my roommates there back in 2000. We hadn't seen each other in 15 years! It was like travelling to the future to see that they look EXACTLY the same (what are they eating?) and they have the two most gorgeous fun kids, May and Jasper who really got along with Henri and Charlie!!
Navigating the truck and trailer in the streets of DC was challenging but Gareth is a pro! Parallel parking it on their street was also quite the task!
We started our time there by going to the Smithsonian Zoo which was 5 minute walk from their house. What a lovely zoo! The best I have seen. AND,, all museums and zoos are free in DC! yay!
Then dinner with our friends for a good catch up!
The next day we decided to go see the white house and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum by bike! Henri 's bike was bust and I don't have a bike so we managed to rent a Lime City Bike! DC is really well made for bikers so we biked in traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue nice a safely in our bike lane. The people were so friendly and chatty!!!
Again, I was very surprised at how excited I was to see the White House.
The Air and Space museum was super fun and Charlie won the paper airplane making and throwing competition!!
The next day, our plan was to go to the zoo for the whole day.
However, we woke up to find a parking ticket on our truck. It was for having a trailer parked on a residential street.
The price was unreal at $1000 (usd). Gulp.
Needless to say, we were in shock and our friends were also horrified at this!
Our friends emailed their neighbourhood representative who got in touch with some sort of important politician to help our cause. Rona spent a good part of her day trying to figure something out for us. THANKS again!!
Anyway, a blog post was made about our situation - not by me but by the neighbourhood rep. and it made a bit of a stir and had many views and comments (not all nice which petrified me...).
Anyway a very resourceful Gareth biked back to downtown and appeared in front of a judge, having to swear on the bible and all that, to plead our cause. The judge could see the ticket was not really meant for a situation like ours and dismissed the ticket on the ground that the trailer (which is so small- 14 feet) was still attached to the truck.
Phew.
During his ordeal, the boys and I went to the zoo. I can't even say how amazing the zoo was (in case Gareth actually reads this blog...) It was WOW!
Said a sad goodbye to our friends and made our way south once again.
Here's the link to the blog post from the Neighbourhood Rep. Quite entertaining and upsetting. someone calls us hipsters for crying out loud!
https://www.popville.com/2017/11/thousand-dollar-parking-ticket-mount-pleasant/
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