Friday 8 Nov, HHN day 28: We go to Washington DC to vote and to attend a basketball game.
As anticipated, the lapping was awful so not much sleep despite wearing the earplugs. With this big cold front the temperatures dropped significantly, and when Glen goes out he finds ice on the pontoon. No point planning for much outdoors activities, so he continues from where he left off with his splicing. The remodeled strops work well with the aft lift points but the clearance to the outboard is still too tight. So we order new U-bolts to install a new set of lift points for the aft of the dinghy.
Meanwhile, I am keen to go to Washington DC today to vote for the Romanian presidential elections. (Last time I voted for presidential elections we were in Dubai. Where will we be next time, I wonder?). Although the vote itself is very important to me, to ask Glen to drive all the way there just for that would be a bit much. So I find an incentive for him: I buy tickets for an NBA game at Capital One Arena, with very good seats. Well, truth is the tickets are a shared present, because I am a big fan of basketball since the days Teo (my brother) used to be a basketball player, then later on a referee. And to be able to watch a live NBA game would be an amazing experience.
So early afternoon we set off on our road trip to the big capital. First stop, the Romanian Embassy, of course. Where I am surprised (and disappointed at the same time) to be the only one in the voting section. Well, people must still be at work.
As we now have time to kill till the game, we head off to a nearby Home Depot for a relatively short shopping list. The best findings are a grease gun and marine grease, and we manage to pick some other bits and pieces. The shopping list is not fully ticked though, so more orders from Amazon to be placed soon.
Once we manage to get to the arena (after fighting the traffic back through the city), we find parking space for the modicum amount of $30! What a rip-off. As we exit the underground parking, we find ourselves in front of a Thai restaurant. What were the chances of that?! Of course we take the opportunity and sit for a quick Thai dinner of our favorite dishes… yummy. Clearly they have real Thai chefs in the kitchen.
Then time for the most exciting moment of the day, the basketball game. Wow, what a venue and we have such great view from our seats. Just wished my brother could sit with us too. The buildup before the game is quite nice, I can see why Americans enjoy attending sports competitions as a family event (wish we had that back home too). Then the game starts, Washington Wizards vs Cleveland Cavaliers. Seems slow to begin with, but becomes more interesting as it progresses. What we can’t quite make out is why the game gets interrupted so often. Especially as the attacks are in progress. Is it for commercial breaks on TV? Anyway, it was a fantastic experience and hopefully we will attend another NBA game sometime in the future, with one of my former favorite teams playing.
As we drive back towards our floating home we see the temperature dropping one degree C every 5 minutes. It reaches 0degC, and it’s not even midnight. The walk from the parking lot behind the marina office to the end of the C pontoon where we are docked never seemed so long. It is freezing! Literally. And very low tide too, this wind really pushes the water out of the bay. The Raymarine shows 2.8m depth (yesterday we docked in 3.2m).
We are so happy to find some warmth inside, but we do turn up the heating to turbo power. No energy to do anything else, so we head directly to bed.
Not a productive working day, but a very rewarding day otherwise with three big achievements: vote, Thai food, and NBA game. Life off the boat is not too bad either 😊. It is, after all, our first “day-off” in 4 weeks.