Walking in April: Of Multimodal Miles and Museums

Over the years my work has given me the opportunity to get to Washington, DC, every so often. These trips started with a "DC Fly-In" sponsored by Greater Spokane Incorporated for congressional office meetings back when I led communications and public affairs at WSU Spokane, through attendance at the National Bike Summit as executive director at Washington Bikes, and now I go for events like the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting and participation on research oversight panels for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.

Given the distance, time zone differences and flight schedules, even a one-day meeting in DC involves three days: one to get there, one to be there, one to get back. And so it was that on a Sunday I started my multimodal trip for an NCHRP panel I'm chairing. 

Multimodal went like this: 

• Leave at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time to ride as passenger in car to the Olympia Amtrak Centennial Station (thanks for the ride, Sweetie!). 
• Train to Tukwila. 
• King County Metro Rapid Ride F to Tukwila light rail (insert commentary here about how nicely logical it would have been to have Amtrak and light rail connect directly the way DC Metro and Amtrak do at Union Station in DC, but also yay for my Orca card working seamlessly for bus and light rail trips). 
• Light rail to SeaTac Airport. 
• Walk-walk-walk because the light rail station is a ways from the terminals (insert more commentary here about the time and labor cost imposed on nondrivers in order to provide storage for personal belongings close to the terminal, and also a bit of gritching about how the TSA Pre-Check security is always clear at the far end, hence a bunch more walking). 
• Fly to DC. 
• Catch DC Metro to a stop about 15 minutes from my hotel, feeling grateful for transit frequency so I didn't have a long wait to leave the airport. I could have transferred to get a tiny bit closer but the time difference was minimal and by this time I really needed to move my legs!
• Walk to hotel. Arrive at last around 11 p.m. Eastern time. Sure, that's only 8 p.m. home time, but that's a loooong day.

Monday held a bit of walking to and from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine building where we met, and a walk at lunch to pick up takeout from Shouk, my absolute favorite DC restaurant for both its outstandingly delicious 100% plant-based food and its sense of purpose and mission. Thanks to the time zone difference I worked into the evening for meetings that were in the afternoon for folks back home and took a whack at the email undergrowth. I took myself out to dinner at the nearby Busboys and Poets (a Langston Hughes reference), got a couple of books of poetry by Rita Dove and Nikki Giovanni, and enjoyed a delicious vegan red curry risotto.

Tuesday—ah, Tuesday! More email whackage to start the day. My plane didn't leave until 5:35 p.m. Eastern and I'd be getting home around 9:30 p.m. Pacific. I didn't have meetings so part of Tuesday became my Sunday as a form of schedule adjustment. I left my heavier backpack at my hotel and started racking up the steps.

When I have time in DC I try to get to one place I haven't visited before and get back to a favorite. I visited:

The new-to-me Art Museum of the Americas, housed in the original residence of the Organization of American States Secretary General. Not too far from the White House, this includes a stunning tiled wall influenced by Aztec art and displays of work by artists from Latin America and the Caribbean.

From there I headed to the Lincoln Memorial. Packed with people reading the words of the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Speech carved on the side walls, it never fails to move me as I wonder how things could have gone differently in Reconstruction.

Next stop, the memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A giant rock cleaved in half leads to a statue and several of his powerful statements carved on walls at a location alongside the Tidal Basin. The water sparkled in the sunshine, tourists thronged the walkways and wobbled past on bikeshare and rental bikes, a light breeze moved the leaves on the trees. Peak cherry blossom season had passed, but petals still drifted about.

April is #30DaysOfBiking month and I had thought I might make use of a bikeshare bike to get in some pedaling, but it kept being easier to just keep walking rather than find a bike, install the app, and ride a relatively short bike distance to places I wanted to stop. As I trudged along to my next planned stop, the National Museum of the American Indian, I regretted this decision but that was at a point with no bikes nearby, so hoof it I did.

Which was fine! Beautiful sparkling day, after all. Along the way I stopped at the National Museum of Asian Art (the Freer and Sackler galleries) and spent time with the gorgeous Peacock Room, the metalworking of Iran, Chinese and Korean porcelain, and more. 

I love looking and learning. And yet, all museums now make me think of the theft and exploitation that underpins the acquisition of items on display (even more so since recently watching What Was Ours, about Shoshone and Arapaho people seeking to reclaim sacred artifacts from museums). The scene in "Black Panther" when Eric Killmonger talks to the museum curator about the theft of the items in those cases comes to mind. I simultaneously mourn the way these beautiful items came to be in those cases, and appreciate what I learn about their cultures, uses, and peoples.

Thinking about this, I also recognized that some of the people I saw visiting the exhibits were discussing how their own cultural history and the works of their ancestors were in these rooms. We weren't all going to take a trip around the world to experience these cultures and places directly; a bit of the world comes to us in museums.

The day was warm and I had long since stuffed my jacket and scarf into my small backpack. Arriving at the American Indian museum, I paused outside to appreciate the running water cascading down, just as people coming upon water in a dry landscape have done for eons.

I've been to this museum on a past trip and the clock was ticking toward my departure time so I wasn't there to look at exhibits. This time I had my heart set on having lunch in the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe, rated one of the best museum cafes by more than one reviewer. I wish I'd grabbed a photo of the display that showed how many foods native to North and South America have made their way around the globe. I had no idea peanuts originated in Peru, for example.

After a delicious lunch—wild rice with cranberries, a Brussels sprout salad, and of course fry bread with honey and cinnamon—I headed back to my hotel. At this point I really would have switched to a bikeshare bike, but the Capital Bikeshare kiosk I stopped at was having some kind of problem with the app. I watched others try to grab a bike and shake their heads in failure, and kept walking. When all other modes have issues, if you're able to walk you count on your feet.

Back at my hotel I wondered briefly why I had gone to museums that were about as far away as I could have chosen. I did a bit more email, swung my heavy pack onto my back, and headed to that closer Metro station. This time I was more than willing to make a transfer to spare myself a few steps! Metro to the airport, long walk through the terminal to my gate, and then hours of sitting before the final steps from gate to baggage claim to the car my sweetie brought to pick me up since there are no feasible late-night transit options from SeaTac to Olympia.

Total steps for the day: 19,035, or 8.48 miles as calculated by my phone app. For comparison my Sunday and Monday steps hit a bit over 7,800, and a typical Saturday walk downtown with a bus trip back gets me around 10,000-11,000. As the saying goes, my dogs were barkin'.