chicago love.: dc and richmond

time has been passing in bizarre patterns these last few days. we spent friday checking out a few museums down at the 'mall' in dc, riding our bikes around the city (it's so fun to ride in traffic again!) and then coincidently ran into colie, who neither of us have seen in about three years but were just talking about that morning. the world works in strange ways. we ended up going out with him and jill later on that night in adams-morgan (which was a total scene--i felt like i was back on higuera in san luis. weird) and talked until 2:30am about high school people i haven't thought about in ages.

the next morning we left bright and early to head back to richmond for best friends day--getting stuck in traffic reminiscent of la but still getting in time to meet up for the 8 mile ride out to havad lake. it was a blast to be riding through such beautiful countryside with a couple hundred kids, only to get to the water park and ultimately feel like it was punk rock spring break '08. rope swings, water slides, bands, beer and vegan tacos. way to be richmond, way to be.

we rode back into town around 8 and tried to go to a house show where ceremony and paint it black were playing, but ended up only watching part of the show as the house was so small i could only watch through the window. it was eriely like watching tv and we decided it would be better to leave for panda veg--chinese vegan food with a buffet (donuts) and had silly conversations about atom and his package and comparisons between duck sauce and dogshit (thanks garret :)

after thanking alison for putting us up for one more night, we began our trip back to dc and recuperated a bit before christina and i decided to ride down to arlington to meet up with rich for a thai dinner. it was nice to get out and ride across the bridge (even though seeing parts of georgetown reminded me a lot of the marina) and it was entertaining to hang out with rich and hear extensive stories from his running camp. ultimate lesson of the night: it's only awkward if you make it. but i kind of liked "no fronting" too.

we left arlington to go to the black cat and met up with garret for the port o'brien show. it was awesome to see all the san luis kids and they played a really fun set, too, bringing out the pots and pans for 'i woke up today' and bring some ridiculously excited girl up on stage for 'treebones' we stayed to watch bodies of water and then came back to garret's for the ultimate slumber party--they showed up at the house with a bottle of patron in hand (van citing marah carey as his inspiration) and it was just silly catching up, sharing travel stories and talking about people from back home. There were 18 people in the house last night and once we realized 10 of us were from california, it made me feel like i wasn't 3000 miles away from home.