Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Road Trip!

Blessings Darlings!

My life features a monthly road trip to central  Maryland once a month for business stuff.  Today was that day.  Lovely day for driving (well, after the intense morning fog cleared (both in my head and in the real world)), the leaves had peak fall colors, the sun was shining, the temperature was lovely.

Instead of just my usual stops, I added OccupyDC to the list of places to go. 

See, I had cooked a huge batch (75 one-cup servings worth) of Lentil Vegetable soup the night before to bring over there.  It's a damn fine thing I spent a semester or two volunteering at the Maryland Food Co-op, helping prepare Vegan Lunch for 350, because I used all of that knife and big-ass cooking skill for this!  It WOULD have been easier if I had real restaurant quality and number soup pots, cutting boards, measuring cups (measuring quarts/gallons?), prep bowls, etc.  And I gave up cutting veggies at 75 servings, instead of making the 100  had planned, but I admit I'm out of mass-chopping practice!

So this morning I loaded up the car, the soup in re-purposed frosting buckets (Yay for prepping, which meant I had them on hand), printed out directions to McPherson Square, and headed in.  Was stopped for a while due to an accident on 270.  Okay, no biggie. Then, something was up on Clara Barton Parkway.  Lots of police cars at the parking for the C&O Canal.  Get to Canal Road - traffic is not moving.  Turn on radio.  Not only are the police closING Canal Road ... but they've already closed off the freeway the directions want me to take. How was I to know that President Obama was giving some speech at the Georgetown Waterfront? Oh Dear. I do NOT know this part of DC. 

Inching my way forward with traffic, I think, okay, I couldn't make a right onto the freeway, I'll make a right here... Oh - I'm on a bridge going over a river.  That means I screwed up, and am heading into Virginia and AWAY from my destination. Oh! A sign for the Roosevelt Bridge!  Zoom! Back in DC, and on the Mall, where I could find my way easily again.

McPherson was easy to find, parking was not.  Ended up parking illegally, just long enough to drop off the buckets of soup (neatly labeled as vegan and gluten-free).

I'd love to go back, catch workshops, work the kitchen or cleanup, take part in an action if one is going on. But for that, I'll need to take Metro in from Montgomery Village or something, with the Spawn dropping me off and picking me up.  And even that metro stop CLOSEST to home is 50 miles away, requiring a lot of family help.  Not an everyday thing. Maybe once a month? We'll see...

Frondly, Fern