Senior Missionary Outing to the Kennedy Center

December 8, 2013

Sister Boone and I decided that we would finally participate in one of the Senior Missionary excursions.  Yesterday we went to Washington, D.C. to tour the Kennedy Center.  The tour was set for 11:00.  We could either drive to the Branch Avenue Metro stop and pay about $10 each to ride the Metro to Foggy Bottom and then take a free shuttle over to the Kennedy Center, or we could drive to the Kennedy Center and pay $22 for parking.  We decided to drive.  That was an easy choice for me because it is Sister Boone's turn to drive this month.  She has driven into D.C. with her brother and daughter a few times now and felt more comfortable driving there.  We arrived about 10:50, with only a couple of detours, one because of construction and the other because we missed our turn. 

We started the tour a few minutes late as we waited for a couple of people to join us.  We started in the Hall of Nations and then planned to proceed from there to the various concert sites.  There was the large Concert Hall, the Opera House, the Eisenhower Theater, and the Terrace Theater.  Each of the lobbies displayed gifts of art from countries around the world.  Before we could see even one of the areas, we were told that those areas were closed for our safety while crews were setting up for later events of the weekend.  She tried to tell us what beautiful views we were missing out on, but this was no consolation.  We turned to go to the only place we could see that morning, the terrace, which we were excited to do.  But when we walked past the desk where the tours began on our way to the terrace, our guide was informed that the terrace was also closed now.  She offered her sincere apology and invited us to come back another day, which we probably will not do.  We saw the only things that remained open for the public--the gift shops--and then headed to lunch.

We got on the shuttle bus to the Foggy Bottom Metro stop and across the street to Roti Mediterranean Grill.  The grill has a stand-in-line type of service similar to Café Rio or Subway.  They did not have enough hot and ready food to feed our group of 21, so some of us had to wait while they cooked up more meat and fill our orders.  For me, this little shop was reminiscent of the one where Alex took Verlin and I to eat doner kebabs almost seven Christmases ago when we were in Frankfurt in 2006.

After we ate, Sister Boone and I said goodbye to the others and returned via shuttle to the parking garage at the Center and headed home.  We tried very hard to follow the GPS closely to get out of unfamiliar territory and onto the highway that we are familiar with from our weekly trips to the temple.  We almost made it without incident.  At one point, we drove onto the freeway ramp on the left side of the ramp and found out when we merged that we had only 2/10 of a mile to move to the right and exit again.  Sister Boone slowed down almost to a stop to wait for passing cars to let her in and then she shot across the last two lanes and off the freeway.  We proceeded on to the next stretch thankful and surprised that we had made it.  A few seconds later, we heard a woman's voice behind us over a loud speaker saying "That was a smooth move."  We looked around to see where the voice was coming from.  Where did that voice come from and was she talking to us was the question of the day.  Sister Boone looked in her side view mirror and noticed what appeared to be an unmarked police vehicle behind us.  We mused about what kind of woman it would take to be a tough female Washington, D.C. detective; obviously one with some grit--and a sense of humor.  A few minutes later, she pulled into the lane to our left and passed us.  Sister Boone pulled in behind her, and her lights went on for just a couple seconds.  100 feet later, she turned off the road to go the other direction.  Was she sending us a warning to be careful or giving us her version of the high five for Sister Boone's "smooth move"?  Sister Boone said that Heavenly Father really knew her well and had compassion on her by assigning her to work in Southern Maryland instead of the metro area where traffic is crazy.  She added that sometimes she is sure that he is having a good laugh at our expense.  She makes me laugh too.

Sometime Saturday night a storm began to make its way across Maryland.  We weren't sure whether we should risk driving an hour south to Lexington Park for church, since there was a winter storm advisory against travel due to freezing rain and snowy conditions.  We decided that we would wait until 12:00 to make a decision.  If it seemed too bad we would just go to church in White Plains.  It looked like it wasn't that bad, so we got on our boots and grabbed our gloves and umbrellas and left the apartment.  When we got to the car and Sister Boone started to clean the windows, we realized that the rain was already freezing on the car and would soon be freezing on the roads as well.  So we returned to our apartment and waited another 45 minutes and headed back out to go to White Plains 1:00 meeting.  As we approached the road out of our parking lot, Sister Boone applied the brakes and the anti-lock brakes kicked in as we skidded to a stop.  We drove at a turtle's pace to the church and arrived about 1:05.  There were only four cars in the parking lot.  It appeared that a few others had been parked there for a little while because they had less snow than the rest of the parking lot.  I guess they forgot to send us the memo about canceling church.  We drove back home and spent the day in our apartment.  I read scriptures, the Ensign, watched videos on lds.org and we watched Music and the Spoken Word.  We later also watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional this evening to help it feel a little more like Sunday.  Tomorrow we will do some planning and hopefully get back to work on Tuesday after a long break from our visits. We are both anxious to be engaged in the work once more.