My aunt, Heidi, was driving us around town to see some of the neighborhood streets and we missed a turn or something and had to pull a u-ey in a parking lot. By the time we made a loop around the lot and came back to the street, it was blocked off. Sup-ah fast!
We were two cars back and stuck there until the police officer standing guard at the barricade let us through. We knew that President Obama was on his way to the Height funeral at the National Cathedral and wondered if this might be the route he was taking.
Sure enough, about a minute later President Obama's entourage, (something like forty vehicles), came rushing past and Obama was in the back of the third limo that went by. I took video of it for my kiddos, but I was at a bad angle and you can't really see him. I'd post it anyway, in case you're really bored, but You Tube is down and I refuse to use blogger to upload video anymore. This one's too long, anyway. I'll post later, if I remember.
National Cathedral, as close as we could get that morning. Beautiful day though, eh?
Event number two was also something that took place when we were the second car back, at a stop light. (We started to wonder about the wisdom of being the second car in line for anything - you never know what might happen.)
There we were, minding our business, waiting for the light to turn green and out of the blue there is a crash of metal on metal, (no screech of tires, mind you), and in about a tenth of a second there were guys jumping out of cars pulling guns on the guy who's SUV got hit.
And then the police badges came flying out and we realized we were witnessing the end of a high speed chase. Andrew was yelling at me to get down and Heidi was shouting, "They've got guns! They've got guns!" Aunt Kate was heroically trying to exit the car to help the driver of another car that got hit, but Heidi was holding her back and still shouting "They've got guns!"
It was chaos outside on the street, but the inside of our car was a bit of a madhouse, too.
It all happened so fast that the last thing I wanted to do was get down. I wanted to see what the heck was going on! It wasn't long before the five or so cops had the bad guy in cuffs and had caught the other bad guy who had high tailed it on foot.
I wish to heck I'd taken a picture of that take down, seeing as it was about twenty feet from us and quite honestly a little scary, but in that one moment of hesitation wondering if I would look like a total moron, I lost my chance. We had to move through the intersection.
What an adrenaline rush though! I bet Heidi is still screaming about guys with guns!
Shocker number three was something I'm sure you all heard about - the botched bomb in Times Square. We were there that day, but we had left the area about an hour and a half before it all went down. (My mother was so glad that the bomb fizzled and that we weren't there because she was pretty exhausted from tending my kids and didn't want it to become a permanent job.)
I won't go into details because if any of you don't know about it then you need to crawl out from under your rock and read a paper or watch the news, but I will say that it was lucky that the bomb didn't go off because it would have been bad. I'm so glad that everyone was safe.
Times Square...Look! It's Gary!
All the Broadway shows were canceled for that night and I was beyond grateful that we had seen the matinee performance of Phantom. I really feel bad for all the people who missed their shows. Just imagine everyone who didn't get to see the shows which they had bought tickets to months in advance and looked forward to, and all the people who had to sit out on the street in the middle of the night waiting for their hotels to be accessible. Our hotel was about twenty blocks from Times Square, so we had no trouble.
A lot of people are thinking that it wasn't really any big deal because the bomber screwed up, but I have to say that I feel lucky we are all okay.
Those three events were not the highlights of the trip, but they were definitely memorable.
Tomorrow - Top Ten Moment #3: The Porch At Mt. Vernon.
Sounds like you had a very eventful trip!! Don't you hate how the president moving makes everything stop?! The hospital we are assigned to up here is also the President's hospital, now I realize that he doesn't come in and wait and in the waiting room when he has a sore throat, but I always wonder what happens if I'm going into labor at the same time he has to walk from his exam room to the potty, do I have to just sit it out in an elevator somewhere until he stops moving?? :)
ReplyDeleteDoug and I missed the London Tube bombings by about 12 hours when we were there a few years ago and that was pretty freaky. Glad you guys weren't in Times Square!
Most people don't experience even 1 of those things in their entire life, yet you lived through all three in a matter of a few days!
ReplyDeleteThat is a very eventful trip indeed - and those weren't even the things you planned on doing!
ReplyDeleteI'm so, so glad you guys are safe as well.
Can't wait for tomorrow's post! :)