Today's Walk Did Not Go According to Plan

I was off from work today, which is always a lovely treat, and even better, the weather was gorgeous!! The high today didn't even make into the 80s, and the humidity was low. After the rains of the weekend, the clear skies this morning were particularly welcome.

A few weeks ago, I made plans for today to get together with Dolores, the mother of one of my William & Mary friends. Dolores and I reconnected about a month ago, and not having seen each other in over nine years, I thought lunch would be a great opportunity to catch up. So we made plans to meet today at noon at the Bertucci's at White Flint Mall. The mall is located on Rockville Pike in Montgomery County, and given that Rockville Pike is an extension of Wisconsin Avenue, which I've walked along many times to get from home to Bethesda and back again, I thought it would be an easy walk. Oh, I was so wrong. So very, very wrong. But I digress. Let me begin at the beginning.

I left home just before 8:30 this morning, and the sky was a beautiful shade of blue.

Although I looked closely, I saw no sign of either turtles or the blue heron when I passed the green pond along the trail.

Crossing over I-66 as I walked along Lee Highway, I was glad that I was out walking rather than stuck in morning rush hour traffic.

I got to the Key Bridge at 9:15 and stopped to take a picture of the sign welcoming me to the District.

Twelve years ago this week, I began working at the building pictured below. Located on the DC side of the bridge, this somewhat tired looking structure once housed the American Institutes for Research, my employer from September 1999 to September 2004. (I gleefully resigned on my five-year anniversary!)

While I waited to cross M Street to head up the hill on 34th, I stopped to take this picture of a Betsy Ross flag fluttering in the breeze over a building on Prospect Street.

Walking toward Glover Park, I came across this remnant of Hurricane Irene near the intersection of 34th and Q Street.

I liked the wreath on the door of this house, so I stopped to take a picture of it and of some nearby flowers. The house dates to 1884 and is located not too far from the intersection of 34th with Wisconsin Avenue.

Continuing on my way, I walked up toward the National Cathedral. When I arrived there, I was sad to see that in addition to the millions of dollars of damage suffered during last week's earthquake, the property also lost trees during the storm over the weekend. If you look very closely, you'll see a fallen tree in the picture below.

Once I arrived in Bethesda, a little before 11:00, I had to cross back and forth across Wisconsin Avenue several times, as signs like this appeared in my path repeatedly.

Leaving downtown Bethesda behind me, I continued northward along Rockville Pike, traveling along this part of the road for the first time. Soon, I passed the National Naval Medical Center, which will soon be rennamed the Bethesda Walter Reed National Military Medical Center when the Walter Reed Army Medical Center closes in mid-September. President Franklin Roosevelt selected this site for the medical center in 1938 and laid the cornerstone in November 1940. When the center was dedicated in 1942, the intention was for it to provide medical care to military personnel only. But immediately, staff at the center offered to provide President Roosevelt with any medicine or treatment necessary to keep him physically fit for the Presidency, and ever since, most Presidents have relied on this hospital to provide medical care for themselves and their families.

Just a mile up the road from the medical center, I found the Bethesda Meeting House. The meeting house pictured below dates to 1850 and was built on the foundation of an 1820 Presbyterian church which burned to the ground in 1849. When a larger Presbyterian church was built closer to the center of Bethesda in 1925, the church's trustees sold the land to a woman who then lived in the church for the next twenty years. Today, the church is owned by the trustees of the Temple Hills Baptist Church, which purchased the property in the 1950s. Interestingly, the town of Bethesda takes its name from this church, which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda.

The picture above is the last one I took on today's walk, because as I continued northward toward the mall, the walk got more and more difficult (and dangerous). Just north of Pooks Hill Road, which I think must have been named for a mansion of the same name located on Rockville Pike in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the sidewalk disappeared. Poof! There one minute, gone the next.

I was determined (stupidly) to keep going, so I climbed over a guard rail along the side of the road and went on my way. For the first few hundred yards, the ground was relatively flat. I was pretty unnerved by the eight lanes of traffic speeding by to my right side, just a few feet from me, and the steeply sloping hill that dropped off preciptiously to my left. I actually had the thought, "This isn't as bad as breast cancer," as I kept going. I often have a hard time giving up even when I know I should.

The flat area in the grass kept getting narrower and narrower, until about a half-mile into this ordeal, my left foot was a full 18 inches lower on the ground than my right foot. I'm sure the motorists passing by must have thought I was crazy, as I limped along. Then, every so often, I came across a depression in the ground, which I couldn't see, because the grass was so long, and that provided an additional challenge. By that point, I finally admitted to myself that this really wasn't a good idea. But you guessed it. I kept going. I had decided to walk to the mall, and walk to the mall I would, come hell or high water. I am such a McCord. (That's completely stubborn, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness, for those of you not familiar with my genetic material.)

At one point, I had to climb over the guard rail onto the street, because there was nowhere to walk on the "safe" (and I use that term very loosely) side of the rail. I began questioning my sanity. When I climbed back over the guard rail, I hit my left knee so hard that a bruise and bump developed instantly. Any smart person would definitely have turned around by this point. So I kept going. The ground was quite overgrown, and I really couldn't see what was under that long grass, so you can imagine my surprise when something wet, warm, and smelly splashed up on my leg and into my face. I'd stepped on a half-full beer can which had been lying there for who knows how long. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were. I decided then and there that I had to revise my plans.

I called Dolores and told her I'd be late, then turned around and retraced my steps, finally arriving at the Medical Center metro station, two miles from the nasty beer can incident. A short ride later, I arrived at the White Flint station, located a mere 1.5 blocks from the mall. Twenty-five minutes late, I found Dolores waiting for me inside the restaurant chatting with the hostess. By this point, I was so hungry and thirsty, and I had a great time chatting with Dolores over a spinach salad. She and I parted ways a little before 2:00 and promised that we would not let nearly a decade go by before seeing each other again.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I walked 15.1 miles, and I took the metro all the way home. I will never, I repeat, never, walk along Rockville Pike again. Ever.