Blossoms, Bumper-to-Bumper, and Bites: A Day in D.C. Adventures

Hi, I'm Kevin. No, I'm not Kevin. What's the line? Hi, I'm Jack.

Hi, I'm Jack. And I'm Kevin. This is good company in the car. Music. So before we move to Fort Lauderdale, I want to do things in D.C. That D.C. natives don't normally do. I'm not going to the top of the Washington Monument, but I really did want to go and see the cherry blossoms. blooms one last time. I've done it a few times over the years. What do you think? Well, they don't really do that much for me, but I think part of it is because I've seen them so many times.

Because you actually, you're working in DC and I'm not. Yeah, yeah. And I went in the 80s a few times. We went down today. There are five or six different varieties. I think the Yoshinos are in full bloom right now. Are those like the Maraschinos? Yeah, kind of, but they were They were kind of in full bloom. And, you know, it was a Tuesday. Well, you were under the belief that they were in full bloom. Yes, WTOP said that. And I think it was that one variety is at the peak right now.

That's why so many of them kind of looked bleak. Well, there were lots of people out walking around. There were. And I think a bunch of them looked just, they were like two-thirds of the way there. I don't regret it. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic. I have lots of regrets, but it's not going to see the cherry blossoms. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And, but just, you know, cause we're, we're heading to the Lauderdale where apparently spring break is currently occurring.

Oh, and I told you my favorite part of the cherry blossoms is after they're in full bloom. Yes. And the, and, and before the, before any type of weather beats the hell out of them. Cause if it rains or anything, it messes up the bloom. Sure does. And, but once they're in full bloom and they start to fall, it's like snow. It's magical. And everything's covered with the cherry blossom petals. And it's actually very, very pretty. I was there for that once back probably

30 years ago. And it was a windy day and they were just starting to fall. Yeah, they blow everywhere and it actually looks like snow. It's really, really cool. We saw a bunch of people doing photo shoots. Yes. They were like a fancy like saris. Well, yeah, I was going to say they didn't, most of them appeared and I'm not using the word negatively, but foreign. And they didn't look, they didn't, they, they looked Asia, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, I'm not sure.

They look like tourists. Well, well, they might not have been tourists, but they didn't. They weren't American tourists. They weren't white. Now, how racist is that? They weren't white, but they were pretty. So we saw the one girl, she had the thing wrapped all around her. And I was laughing because I was like, oh, can I get out and do that? So, you know, yeah. But it was everywhere. But there were a lot of people doing photo shoots and people in traditional scar and things like that.

Traditional, is that the word? Yeah, I think it is. Anyway, it was fun. The traffic was bumper to bumper.

He was an oh oh let me tell you yeah oh kevin hates the traffic i love me some bumper to bumper traffic when jack's got the wheel and it's just because at one point this is really funny so you know you you go up and down the roads and a lot of them are one way or that you can't turn at this time and you know those roads well and i know the roads pretty well and i told him okay now i misjudged i forgot which turns were what i'm going to go up here i'm going to do a u-turn i'm going to make an

illegal U-turn and go into the opposite lanes. And he kind of said, okay. Oh, shit. At the Memorial Bridge. Behind the Lincoln Memorial. You were literally cutting in front of a car coming towards us at 50 miles an hour. And he screamed, kind of screamed. He made a shrieky noise. You made a shrieky noise. And then we had to go across the bridge. And I started laughing. We had to go up to Arlington Cemetery and go around the roundabout and come back into the city.

And I was laughing the whole time because I was like, I could have made that. If you hadn't done that, I could have made that. But we spent about an hour and a half driving around the really iconic parts of downtown Washington, which is where all the cherry trees are. So that's down by the Tidal Basin, Martin Luther King Memorial, obviously the Jefferson Memorial, and around the Lincoln Memorial. And all of those cherry trees were a gift from the Japanese emperor to the United

States. I think it was in 1910 or 1912. And right after Pearl Harbor, there was talk about ripping them all out and there are literally tens of hundreds of them around downtown. And cooler heads prevailed and a bunch of them died off. Yeah, I thought a bunch of them died and they had to be replaced. They were replaced by Japanese. The Japanese sent new ones. Sent new ones, yeah.

And I wish I knew more about that, but it was great. And as we were, I said, let's go up and, and see the cherry blossoms. Let's start knocking off our list of things we're going to do before we're not here in the world's most powerful city anymore. And I said, oh, and after we do that, we can go to Chinatown and we can get some lunch and then you said, so. My ultimate favorite restaurant in D.C. is called Nushi.

It used to be called Oodles and Noodles. I don't remember when it changed names, but when I first started going there, it was called Oodles and Noodles. It was on 19th Street. It's on 19th Street, and it's an Asian fusion restaurant. When I was first going there, I don't remember them having sushi. It was just noodles and different types of Asian. A very kind of a Thai vibe.

Yes, but it is a fusion. you know they have regular chinese dishes but they have thai dishes and they have vietnamese dishes but i started going there in 19 in 96 and 30 years ago let's just go ahead jesus isn't that horrible life is what happens when you're making plans and i i love they have these vietnamese spring rolls and they're so delicious i can't it's like a pork filling with mushrooms and noodles and it's just so good. And then this honey peanut juice, I'm salivating.

And as soon as he said Chinatown, I immediately thought of that. But I was like, oh, we're in the city. I want to go there. I want to go there. I want to go there. And so we went there, we got parked. And then the guy yelled at us in the park. I close at seven. And I'm like, okay, calm down. $14 for two hours. Yeah. And he yelled at us. And so we go to the restaurant and the waitress-y gal remembered me.

That made me feel really good. I haven't been in there in, oh God, it's got to be a couple of years. It was five years. We went Lailor there. Oh, Lailor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was five years ago. No, we've, I've been since then. No, you haven't. It was five years. Yeah. Well, she remembered me and it made me feel good. So the food is absolutely delicious. And I porked out like you wouldn't believe. You ordered 10 orders. I ordered five.

Because that's two pieces in order. No. And he ordered 10. so there was 20 pieces i ordered five orders no no you ordered ten five orders of two egg rolls ten there were two they cut them in half and there was there were there were no no no you ordered ten you ordered ten no no no no no don't even fight me on this i will die on this hill you ordered ten okay how many are in a roll how many are in an order they cut them in half No, no. How many egg rolls are in an order?

One cut and a half? Two egg rolls are in an order. You ordered 10 orders. You ordered 10 egg rolls. Okay. You ordered 10 egg rolls and they were cut in half. So there are 20 pieces. Right. Okay. That I will agree with, but it was five orders. Okay. It was not 10 orders. All right. So, yes. And an entree as well. And I ordered an entree. I did not. I ate all of the. Our Vigovie is not working as well as we would. Well, you know, and I ate all of the egg. Well, you had maybe. I had two.

So you had one solid egg roll. Yeah. I ate all the rest of them. And like, I sat there and hummed. Oh, but your eyes rolled back in your head. Oh, it was like, and I'm just like. I wish I enjoyed something as much as you enjoyed those egg rolls. And I even said that. I believe I said that to you. don't you wish there was something in the world you enjoyed as much as you feel badly for me.

It's true and and i foolishly ordered some chicken satay and it was delicious it was good we just didn't eat the food we've got a we've got some takeaway i brought some home with me but it's just funny because you just think of it it's like i'm really bad about that there are certain restaurants it's the oh i own at nushi i get the vietnamese spring rolls and i get the honey roasted garlic peanut chicken or whatever the hell it's called and it's in the heart of washington

dc anywhere you look there's the washington monuments in the district yes or distance or you can see the white house or you can see it's like you know i washington used to go there all the time i mean it was like once every two weeks once every week you work down there right no no no i'd get home and then i'd go back in you go from here all the way back in yes parking wasn't a parking didn't seem to be such a pain in the ass in wow so because

i i you know used to be able to park in front of the restaurant there was parking on the street there and so you know anyway it doesn't matter but it was just i used to go i used to go into the district a lot to eat and go out and stuff god i'm the idea going into the district now just to do something for fun wait there's got to be a payout what's the pay yeah yeah no that dc has not made it easy to go in.

They're not friendly. But the takeaway from the day was it was nice weather. The. Cherry blossoms were fine. It wasn't stunning, but it was worth the drive. Oh, yeah, it was a fun day. It was pretty. It was heavy, but not like I asked you and you said, this is not bad. Yeah. Is this a lot? No. And I used to work downtown as well. Oh, yeah, because then we were talking about it. Something's coming to life over the other side of the room. I move something and it's falling over.

Because that's what happens when you move stuff down here. Things fall over. Because we're trying to move out of here. The doom room. Those of you who have been following the story, we're working on cleaning this house out. So who set us up, I want to say this. So when you were telling me, because I was laughing, because I remember when there used to be softball games and there used to be volleyball games, and you used to play softball down there by the Lincoln Memorial.

My first job at CCH, I had a window view. The 13th, we were at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, 10th floor. I had a window view out over the mall. My very first job in Washington, I realized they gave me that seat because they weren't paying me anything. And we had a softball team and we played over right by the Washington Monument and tourists would regularly take pictures of us. And I think, and I, that is something that I always thought was super cool.

Like to live in a place where you're literally playing a softball game and the Lincoln Memorial or, you know, the Lincoln Memorial's in the distance, the Washington Monument's in front of you and the Capitol's behind you. I think that's super cool. I remember one guy, his girlfriend showed up and she was, she was nice enough, but she was a little bit.

God clueless she damn she showed up to to play with us and she was dressed like olivia newton john in the let's get physical video she had on like a body suit and she had a headband on and it was really funny and i i didn't have my wingman joe to make oh that's funny behind her back so that's really really but anyway she she thought she looked like a million bucks well she probably did and she may have done for 1986 but yeah hey but we were down there and i just

kept noticing we were driving by we saw guys fishing and then we saw a guy who had a camera out and he was filming he would he was supposed to be fishing but he had a camera out and it was trained on planes leaving national airport where we recently had that mid-air that's what i said to you i said yeah he's recording the planes taking off and like there's a whole subculture of people who really get off on that.

It's kind of like train spotting. It is. It's very weird because there's Roach's Run there right below the airport on the Virginia side, and then there's Haynes Point on the D.C. Side, and they just sit there with binoculars and watch the planes take off. And that was literally, he was looking at the exact spot where there was a collision a couple of weeks ago between the helicopter and the jet.

But it got me thinking about all of the horrible things that I've experienced flying in jets, just flying. I don't like flying. And then you were talking about the. All the different things that you've experienced with flying. And we were talking about, you were like, did you hear about the girl who fell out of the plane? Yeah. And it was a single prop plane. It was over the Amazon. And she fell out of the sky. In her chair.

The whole chair fell out of the plane. She landed uninjured in the jungle. Right. And it took her like a week or so to get found. She knew to follow streams because the streams would go to bigger and bigger waterways. And she knew she'd get to a river eventually. Did you know that? No, I knew she got, I knew she was saved. I didn't know the circumstances. She knew whenever she saw water, flowing water, to follow it to the next source.

Remember then a while ago, there was the plane that part of the top blew off, and if the people hadn't been seat belted in, they would have got sucked. Well, there was an Air Hawaii flight that did that, and a big chunk of the roof flew off. And the stewardess was sucked into the air. That's what I'm thinking. When I'm on a flight, when I'm on a jet, that's all I'm thinking about.

I'm waiting for the cabin to decompress. the window next to me to open and I'm going to get sucked out and I'm going to black out for the first five minutes of my free fall because we're at 36,000 feet. And then at about 2000 feet, I'm going to wake up and I'll have 30 minutes of pure terror before I hit the water at 180 miles an hour and die. That's what I think about the entire time. Now, the funny part about that is, is air travel does not bother me at all.

It's going to be rough. You're going to hit pockets some turbulence, you're going to hit all that. How about that bullshit off of Palm beach last year?

Oh no no no i'm not saying that there's not moments that's going to scare you and stuff like that but my argument or whatever you want to say is i feel safer in a plane i just feel safe in a plane you just yes there's been a lot of accidents but the amount of planes that fly and the amount of wrecks there actually are and oh it's it's right it's absolutely nonsensical right i'm in more, I'm in greater danger of losing my life,

getting in a car with you at any moment in time than being on an airplane. I feel like I almost died a couple of times today. Yeah. You don't, yeah. You don't like the way I drive. I understand that. I do understand that. What the funny part is, is I've tried to change the way I drive. I know you have so that he's not as scared and keep trying, but the funny, the funnier part about that is, is if I drive smoothly, he does,

he reacts because he's not feeling the car stop. I don't feel like you're reacting to the traffic. So I literally, if I have to brake, I have to brake so that he feels the car change. Exactly. We've said this before. Weight distribution.

I don't feel reciprocal deceleration as the car in front of me is hitting the brake lights. Then I don't think you're braking. And the other thing was, and I was taught this. Now we had a... Oh, this is hilarious for me. We had a... It was like a semi... Van truck thing and it was they had the driving school you had a bunch of. Had consoles in it. You went into it. It was a, it was like the back of a tractor trailer, but it was a mobile school to learn driving in. That's what you had? Yes.

And it would go around to the different schools on the Eastern shore. So when we got it parked in the parking lot and you'd go into it and it would have pretend driving consoles and you would practice driving. Oh, wow. I've never even heard of that before. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And the front of the thing was a screen and it would have driving actual film of a car driving. And it's like, we were supposed to turn our signal on as we're turning left and right. And it was really fun.

And I wasn't allowed to get my license when I turned 16 because things and everybody else did, but I didn't. And, but I was taught that for every 10 miles an hour you're driving, you're supposed to have a length of a car in front of you. So if you're going 10 miles an hour, there should be at least a space of a car in front of you.

If you're going 50 miles an hour, you should be able to fit five cars between you and the car in front of you now nobody does that except me so when we're going 60 miles an hour and we're 30 feet off the car in front of me i'm like you know if they hit their brakes and and that's why there's always accidents is because everybody's tailgating somebody has a pothole they they break because they try to do something stupid and then everybody just sandwiches into each

other yes and then everybody's day is not only those people who did that but everybody who is behind them in the traffic pattern and i hate it and i'm gonna get on my soapbox leave room between the cars and you you know i'm am i crazy oh you see it left to right and you see and then there's the people panic breaking and there's the weirdo and that's why there's constantly accidents.

And if people would just do that, and honestly, but when you do that and I, and I'm gripping my, and, and the, the weirdo in front of us starts just panic breaking and I, and you know, or, or, or somebody cuts in front of, I just, I don't, I don't trust other people's driving. And I think most people know that they're, if you only have 30% of the people out there who are incompetent and that's generous, you don't, you don't have to be the one who's not driving.

I understand all of that okay i really do and i do have sympathy for you because i understand if you're not in control if you are not driving if you i don't have a foot on the brake if you are not driving the car you feel a you know i get it i really do get it however you're over there, you're the one who says i'm blind as a bat and i can't see what does that sign say 35 or 25.

That's but i can see a red light come on on the car oh good lord i can't make out fine detail i can still tell there's a big blue car in front of me and the lights just came up right oh my god that's hilarious so the thing i but i but i do i i hate flying uh driving uh and i know driving is more dangerous than flying but i feel worse in the air it's the people yeah it's the people but Yeah, so, and then when we were crossing, we were coming 15th Street.

We were going north on 15th. We were going to cross across the mall. And this woman is standing on the corner with her two kids. And the little boy, the boy, little boy. No, he was 15. He was a teen. He stepped into the road. And it's really narrow. It was one way in each direction. And he was going to get clipped by our rearview mirror if he didn't step back. She was so blasé about it. And I'm like, you let your kids step into the road.

It's like, you know, it just, yeah. But it was, it was. It just got pissy with me. Crawling with tourists though. You said it wasn't that busy. There were people everywhere. People everywhere. And, but anyway, I, I, but watching national and all the flights taking off, I was reminded of all the harrowing.

Times on an airplane and talking about that girl falling out of the sky and that that hawaii air hawaii air i think it was or it was hawaii and that's the one that the top got ripped off and then there's been other examples of that well that one that we were on when we were going to florida and then we i guess we flew into a storm or whatever and we were in that circular pattern oh god we couldn't get we couldn't make it all the way to fort lauderdale so they stopped in palm

beach palm palm beach and they we were off the water we were we were off the land just i mean you could see you know i like to watch that big map in the plane oh i'm gonna i'm gonna put that on the facebook page i've got that i screen grabbed it we we would go into the thunder cell thunderstorm cell and then come back out of it so we were doing don't because they were trying to manage the flights and we'd go into it and then it would be like in a cocktail

shaker yeah and literally like being up and down at the, you know, your seatbelt would, would be strained and thrown left and right gasps. You know, anybody who had any sense of their mortality was terrified.

There was like a teenager and the other row who was laughing. And I, I was like, I took, I took strength from that, but it was, it was, uh, we had to land because we couldn't go to Fort Lauderdale and we were running out of gas and we were running out of fuel. And then when we landed and they said, now we're still going to Fort Lauderdale. If you get off the plane now, you can, but your luggage of the plane got off. Everybody got off. But your luggage is still going to Fort Lauderdale.

So there was you and me and that lady who was going to Bermuda. There were like five or six of us still on the plane, but I was like, well, we got to get to Fort Lauderdale. We got real chummy. And then we were getting ready to leave Palm Beach to fly down to Fort Lauderdale, which is like a hot minute. They were like, oh, they just closed Fort Lauderdale Airport because there was a lightning strike. But we couldn't win on that.

I remember I was coming back from a flight from Vegas and we were in clear air turbulence and it was me and Wayne and we were on an airline. It was a short-lived airline and all of it was business class. All the seats, the entire plane was what they call business class. So it was a two and two configuration, big wide seats. It was a little pricier than going coach, but whatever. But we were on our way back and we're in clear air turbulence. We're over one of the flyover states.

And the captain is like, I'm sorry for the turbulence. We're going to try to get above it. And we went up to like 40,000 feet. Wow. And you could see how high it was. I was like, I've never been this high before. And there was a mother and her teenage daughter across from me and she was crying. And this was back when I wasn't quite so skittish when I was, you know, and I thought, you know, calm down. We're fine. We're at 40,000 feet getting knocked about by these winds.

Could cheer off our wings at any minute. And it eventually subsided, but that was the highest I've ever been. The captain was like, we're almost to 40,000 feet. We're as high as we can really go, and we're sorry about it. But anyway. The only one that I've had that I've actually been really super scared, I can't remember if I've talked about it before. I can't remember all the circumstances, but we were coming back to D.C.

It was a trip. I was coming back into the country. So it was either the France trip or the England trip. And we landed in LaGuardia and there was a storm coming and the flights were being canceled left and right. And we somehow managed to get. Onto a smaller plane with the one seat on the one side and the two seats on the other. A 2-1 configuration. Yeah, yeah, the 2-1 configuration to get back from LaGuardia to D.C.

And we get on the plane and the pilot's like, listen, we just made the window to take off. This is going to be a very rough flight. Keep your seatbelts on. We are canceling the service. Yeah, there's not going to be any service. If you need something, please call the attendant, et cetera, et cetera. And that one jostled the crap out of me because I've never, I'm not used to flying on such smaller planes. So it really, I really felt it. Yeah. But I wasn't that particularly scared at all.

It was just, you know, it was just, it was just being thrown about a little bit. What I get annoyed with is that it seems like every other person, this is the first time they've ever been on an airplane. And as you get in, it's like, put your shit in the overhead compartment, sit down. And everybody's acting like it's rocket science.

And I was on a flight. It's the people. It's the people. It's always the other people. It was a couple, and they had a very, very undisciplined, maybe three- or four-year-old with them. And it was coming back, I think coming back from Florida. And the kid was just unhappy, right? So the parents are trying to negotiate with the terrorist. Not something you wouldn't say on a plane. Right. And, and so the steward, the flight attendant, she's come up and down and, and we're taxing to the runway.

And it was like, we're second for approach, you know, please settle in. You know, you can't ever understand the pilot. And the, the flight attendant comes by and I said to her, I was like, there's a small child under that chair right there next to his parents. He's not buckled in. And she's like, she looks at me and she looks at them. She's like, uh, excuse me. He has to be in that seat with a seatbelt on.

And they kind of looked at her sheepishly like you get them to do it and so the kids screamed luddy murder and the dad forced him into the seat to you know and we were coming back one time it was wayne and i and there was a couple behind us with a very similar child who was having a meltdown and as soon as it started god bless wayne and he was a hero he turned around and he said to that kid he,

That's not going to happen on this fight. And the kid looked at him and he looked at his parents and his parents looked at Wayne and the people all around us. And the kids shut up. The kids shut up. The parents shut up. The people across from us and in front of us. The one guy turned around in front of us and high-fived him. It was genius. The flight attendant was beaming. He looked over at him. But he turned around because he was a little hungover and he was really angry

because of the just flying. and it was brilliant. He put his fingers right in that kid's face. He was probably four or five and he was about to have his way. He was starting a big screaming squealy fit and he said, that's not happening on this flight. And it scared the shit out of the kid. Good. And I think that more people should do that. I agree. Well, but of course now, you're the horrible person yelling at the child.

Yeah. That was great. It was so funny. Was, as Kevin very well knows, if I fly, I want to be there early. I need to get through all the bullshit, through the security and everything, to be in a seat in front of my gate with a diet soda and usually a candy bar, waiting for the—because that's the only time I can really calm down. Because getting to the airport, getting your life, getting to the thing, getting to the security. We're supposed to get that—you remember?

You're supposed to sign up for the TSA pre-emergence. Right, right, right. You got to do that. And it's just one of those weird things because, and then my second, uh, uh, spike of, of, uh, anxiety is when they start letting you get on the plane. You just want to get in your seat and sit. And as soon as I get in my seat, my suit, my one suitcase is in the thingy. My other suitcase is under the seat, but I mean, I got my seatbelt on.

I literally just feel like, yeah, because that now I'm in my seat. I got all my shit. I'm right here. I usually, knock on wood. I usually don't get up on a flight. So, you know, I'm in my little seat and I'm happy as happy as a lark. Now you changed something because the last time you flew, you flew over the wings and you were like, it's so much smoother over the wings.

I used to get seats in the back. I like seats in the back. Just because they're always open, but you feel the turbulence more in the back of the plane. And my last flight down to Fort Lauderdale, I think I mentioned this on another episode or whatever, but it was going to be a snowstorm. It was going to be almost to the day on the 40th anniversary of the Air Florida crash. Right. Flying out of National Airport when they went into the 14th Street Bridge.

Right. We did a whole thing on it, didn't we? Yeah, well, we mentioned it, but I'm like, I am not getting on that plane because I'm going to have one-way ticket to the 14th Street. I knew it. I knew it as much. I was as sure of that happening. as I am sure as the, the puss barking at a cat. And so I, I, I, I canceled my flight and moved it. It ended up that national airport was closed that entire day, but just the thought of getting on an air, an airplane was closed that day too.

Yeah. Oh, speaking of which total subject change, but along the same thing, all these air traffic controllers that got let go.

Now I'm not sure the accuracy of this. So if I'm wrong, I will gladly admit it, but I haven't really gone into the deep dive on this, but the person that's been, that was put in charge that. Fired all those people. Yeah. The job that he had previous to this was as an intern for space X. Oh, oh, okay. Wow. It all comes full circle. And I was like, and they showed a picture of him and he looked like a pimply teen.

Now I have no idea how old he is. I'm not going to, you know, blah, blah, blah, but the picture and the information that I saw online, of course, so I'm not sure of its accuracy. I'm stating allegedly, I could not tell for sure. I didn't get a chance to I'm sure he's a smug 20 something, but he's, but he was one of those guys. It's, you know, he has no idea what he's doing and he fired all these people. And then not, Oh, well, I tell you what, here's the good thing. Okay.

The next time we go to Florida. Yes. You and I. Yes. We're driving. Yeah. And I won't be in the vehicle with you. So you're going to be saying, I won't be next to you. Anyway. So there's the silver lining. Anyway, thanks for listening That's funny Okay guys, thank you, or a warm-up. Music.