Last summer, my extended family and I chartered a bus for a few days of touring in Washington DC. I'd never been before and I was dying to check out all the monuments up-close, but the crowds and the heat conspired to confine us to museums for the entirety of the trip. By the final night I had yet to get a good look at the national mall.
At 8:00 PM on Saturday, I decide that I will not be leaving without visiting those damn monuments. Cue Google Maps: aha, there's a twelve-mile bike trail between our hotel and the mall. I don't have a bike, but I did pack passable running shorts. The bus departs at 7:00 AM Sunday, t-minus eleven hours. Let's do this.
At the behest of a whim, what ensued was one of the most magical nights of my entire life. I could probably go on for pages, but I'll refrain. To summarize, I spent 3.5 hours walk/jogging along a breathtakingly gorgeous trail, two hours running excitedly between the amazing and largely-deserted monuments (some of them, like the Korean War monument, are especially captivating in the dark), and another 3.5 hours battling fatigue, sore legs, and god-awful chafing the likes of which I had never imagined in a race to get back to the hotel before the heat of dawn.
At 8:00 PM on Saturday, I decide that I will not be leaving without visiting those damn monuments. Cue Google Maps: aha, there's a twelve-mile bike trail between our hotel and the mall. I don't have a bike, but I did pack passable running shorts. The bus departs at 7:00 AM Sunday, t-minus eleven hours. Let's do this.
At the behest of a whim, what ensued was one of the most magical nights of my entire life. I could probably go on for pages, but I'll refrain. To summarize, I spent 3.5 hours walk/jogging along a breathtakingly gorgeous trail, two hours running excitedly between the amazing and largely-deserted monuments (some of them, like the Korean War monument, are especially captivating in the dark), and another 3.5 hours battling fatigue, sore legs, and god-awful chafing the likes of which I had never imagined in a race to get back to the hotel before the heat of dawn.
Spontaneity really pays off sometimes.