MEMORIALS ARE EPILOGUES

ONWARD: APRIL 8
Is my head cold responsible for my dark mood? Or my fear of riding through DC?
I feel vulnerable.
I imagine DC as a city to which wise people travel by train or plane. They take cabs to their hotel or to friends' homes. They venture forth by cab or with a guide.
I have a young friend in DC, Elizabeth Bergner. We met this trip in Cartagena, Colombia. Elizabeth is making a career change. She shares a house with the like-minded, mostly met on her travels. I would enjoy listening to their experiences and to their opinions. Sadly, Elizabeth is away at a wedding.
And the Vietnam War Memorial would be out of place at this point in my journal. Memorials are epilogues...

REAP AND WEEP

ROAD TO WASHINGTON, DC: APRIL 8
I am finally north of the Appalachians. Washington, DC, is a rock thrown into a vast economic puddle. Ripples flow outward. White clapboard houses are bigger, better maintained. Mercedes, BMWs and Porches are common as flies on a Third World butcher's slab. I catch glimpses of red brick mansions sheltered by parkland. Riding stables abound, paddocks protected by white picket fences. Horses are as plentiful as hand guns and bare the same romantic mystique. I am crossing the political heartland of the Land of the Free whose early heroic Presidents, General George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were slave owners.
The slaves have rebelled.
Reap and weep.
Or move to the suburbs and gated communities...

NEARLY HOME

TOWARDS WASHINGTON, DC: APRIL 8
I leave the comforts of the Ramada Inn, Harrisonburg, soon after first light.
I ride the Interstate north towards Harrisburg. I am riding through a gently up-and-down horse country of green meadows, white fences and woods. The sun shines – less watery as the morning progresses. Washington, DC, is over to the West. I intend stopping a night in DC. I want to visit the Vietnam Memorial. I also want to be safe at my daughter's, to have this ride done with. To survive.