Today's travel tidbits:
- The motel has a do-it-yourself waffle machine.
- Cheapest gas: $1.99 in Laurel, MD. Prices increased to the south.
- To Maryland drivers, honking is equivalent to foreplay. The tone is closer to the gentle "pip" == "excuse me" you'd hear in Seattle than the naked aggression of a gristly New York cabbie.
- I didn't have my camera or cell phone with me today because the secret facility I visited this morning prohibited them. Even in cars. (There were no car inspections, so I don't know how they would enforce this otherwise.)
- The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum has the original Apollo 11 capsule and SpaceShip One.
- If you park on Independence Avenue at 3pm and deposit $2 in the meter, the meter will show you have two hours. 3pm + 2 hours = 5pm. However, your car will be towed between 4:30 and 4:40pm. (The signs are confusing.)
- Most unusual question received by DC's Finest: "What area code is this?" (These three digits are essential to dialing the number from the non-cameraphone.) I suppose it would have been worse if we asked him: What year is this? Where is Sarah Conner?
- It's very noisy calling from the side of the road like that. Listening to ten minutes of stuff about driver's licenses and social security only ratchets up the stress. Pressing zero, *, # repeatedly will eventually yield a helpful message indicating the office is closed. "Office hours are 9a-5p, Monday through Friday." Yaaah, thank you for that valuable information.
- If you can resist hanging up, throwing the phone or generally making the situation worse, The secret Towing Number is revealed thirty seconds later.
- The car was reparked with a $100 fine (pay by mail please). Our map was still in the car.
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