A Zipline Harness is the New Black
If you live near Bethesda, within an hour you could be part of the latest extreme action craze: dangling from a steel cable and whirring from one big tree trunk to another. It seems that everyone’s trying zip-lining these days.
Before 2002, it would have been unlikely to have a friend share zip-line stories over drinks, but now you can’t hoist a beer without knocking into someone who’s harnessed up and zipped. And the number of thrill-seekers has been doubling each year since 2008. In our area, there are three nearby canopy tours and many more within a few hours drive.
Recently, I found myself sweaty-palmed and inching across slender balance beams suspended above the forest floor, wishing the obstacle course features of the park weren’t so darned high up.
It isn’t enough to just ride across vast clearings on your line, you also have to swing Tarzan-style into giant nets and crawl through hanging tunnels.
My kids loved it, though from now on, I’ll be quite happy to stay on the ground. You have until mid-December to try it for yourself and share tales of your own harness-fittings at this year's seasonal parties.
October in MD: From Wenches to Zombies, Expressing Your Inner “Other”
Maybe you’ve been to the Renaissance Festival and have noticed that people---adult people and lots of them---really love to play dress-up. There’s something liberating, it seems, about becoming someone else for a while.
Whether a temporary wench from medieval times in a fetching leather bustier or a kilt-sporting woodsman gnawing at a roasted turkey leg, you can walk amongst the colorful flags and crystal shops with cheer---your government day job just a hazy, future-tense prospect.
In costume, you are a character on a set, free to improvise different lines for a while, far from your cubicle and pinching office shoes.
Short of a Halloween party, the RennFest was the most acceptable place to dress-up and release your inner “other.”
Until Silver Spring’s Zombie Walk, that is.
Apparently, there are hundreds of the undead among us. Ellsworth Street and Georgia Avenue has teemed with them once a year since 2008. This year, the zombies come out on October 22nd.
Heads, bloody and still sticking to the hatchets that cleaved them, desperate fingers reaching from outstretched tattered sleeves, pale empty faces moaning for “Brains!” Zombie couples, zombie superheroes, and little zombie babies parade past the Discovery building, toward the specially-scheduled zombie movies at the AFI. It is a sight of sore eyes!
If you are not the zombie-dressing sort, come for the spectacle of it. (Though you may find that, like when you are inside the wooden fences of the RennFest, the one who looks strangest is the jeans-wearing, camera-toting, stuck-in-the-modern-moment YOU!)
Visit the AVAM “Toot Suite”
If you’ve been meaning to visit the very-cool American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, now’s the time to go. Summertime Thursday evening admissions are free from 5 to 9, followed by movies shown under the stars on a 30-foot outdoor screen.
If you have (or if you are) someone who doesn’t mind a late drive home, this is a bit of heaven: An outdoor movie watched from a nice hillside after taking in a playful and expansive display of works by self-taught artists. You can bring a picnic along or buy popcorn and hotdogs on site.
The movies this summer celebrate the theme of the museum’s biggest current exhibit, "What Makes Us Smile?" co-curated by founder Rebecca Hoffberger, artist Gary Panter, and Simpson’s creator Matt Groening. Comedic films from “Airplane!” to “Some Like it Hot” are scheduled for screening. Click here for the line-up.
The museum itself is a joy. After checking out the whimsical sculpture garden and once you’ve admired Nadya Volicer's “Smile” welcome mat made from recycled toothbrushes, follow a hallway festooned with the boxes of your most beloved childhood board games, dangling model planes and helicopters to the three-floor gallery. It's the kind of place that features a massive collection of Pez dispensers and a Whoopee Cushion bench.
The day I visited, I lingered longest in a space staged as a bedroom featuring a bed with a headboard of beads and beetle wings made into an intricate and spot-on portrait of MAD Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman by artist Patty Kuzbida.
A glass case filled to brimming with vintage toys arranged in a scene both static and busy stood nearby, including a parade of every action figurine from under your brother’s childhood bed snaking around a double-decker London bus and toy cars of all makes and models.
Steps away, a dog made from guitar parts, picks, and sequins posed under an archway of coconut heads; an enormous and elaborate candy-dotted gingerbread house filled a corner of the room; a blue Electrolux refitted into a space rocket dangled from the ceiling; and this quote from Bill Cosby was painted on the wall:
“Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.”
If yours are back home, take them to see a free outdoor movie and the coolest art around at the AVAM in Baltimore.
Gothic Glory on Wisconsin Avenue
I used to live and work north of Georgetown and spent a lot of time making my way up and down Wisconsin Avenue, back and forth past the National Cathedral. Funny how driving or walking past something routinely can begin to make it almost disappear, even if it’s the 6th largest cathedral in the world and a Gothic wonder. I drove over earlier this week to take a look like a proper tourist.
George Washington’s vision of the capital city included, "A church intended for national purposes, ..., assigned to the special use of no particular sect or denomination, but equally open to all." But it wasn't until 1907 that its construction began and then eighty-three more years to complete---from Teddy Roosevelt to the first George Bush. One of the informational plaques on the 7th level observation level describes that “strolling by in the years just after World War I, one could have seen horses still in use to haul dirt away.”
Whether following the flower-lined path in the medieval walled Bishop’s garden, craning your neck to count gargoyles and flying buttresses, or basking in the jewel-colored light streaming through 200 stained glass windows, you’ll be suitably inspired.
Be sure to notice the piece of moon brought back by the Apollo 11 crew in the center of the deep purples and swirled stars of the “space window.”
Helen Keller is buried here as well as the ashes of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Woodrow Wilson's final resting place is also here. Martin Luther King spoke from this pulpit---his last Sunday sermon before he died.
You can hear the massive organ pipes brought to life every Monday and Wednesday afternoon in free mini-recitals. The Cathedral offers behind-the-scenes tours and a tour that includes tea on the uppermost level. Ideas for engaging your kids in a visit are linked here.
There’s a parking garage under the 57 acre site, but I had no trouble finding a spot on the street. With several restaurants nearby offering outdoor seating, now is the perfect time to get a nice spot of glory and lunch on Wisconsin Avenue.
Finding Balance at Brookside Gardens
I stepped outside this morning and needed no parka nor an umbrella. I thought I’d better do some quick basking in case Spring changes her fickle mind again. I feel like a grumpy 7-year-old who’s been kept from a stack of birthday gifts for an extra two weeks. Finally, today I can tear off the wrapping.
Feeling as knobby and flaked as a sycamore, I meandered along the aromatic pathways in Montgomery County's Brookside Gardens and found a magical balance. My gnarled attitude smoothed out along with my furrowed brow. Early pinks and shocking yellows promised more color to come and my fussy mood lifted away onto a breeze.
You can’t stare into a cherry tree and stay disgruntled. Or sniff a hyacinth. Try it.
You’re Closer Than You Think to Being Seaside
The stubborn chill of March in Washington DC has me daydreaming about taking a break to search for spring. I happen to know about a sugary sand oasis in Florida where, in the same amount of time it takes to put your winter clothes in storage, you could be hopping into your rented convertible and motoring toward the idealized town called Seaside.
"The Truman Show" was filmed in this Florida Panhandle community in 1998 and you may feel you're on a movie set: It's a perfect town, built on the principles of New Urbanism. Every street connects via walkways to the town's center and porches are close to the sidewalks to encourage conversation with passersby. You can shop for records and books on the square and hear a concert on the green. Points of access to the beach are framed by architecturally unique sculptural entryways. They're impressive, but the real thrill is reaching the top of the stairway to find the Gulf Waters impossibly blue and shimmering. The antidote to the DC wintery air that will not relent.
Oh, think of it: squeaky white sand under bare feet, a fruit shake from one of the Airstream trailers that serve as sidewalk cafes along the main strip, an outdoor breakfast complete with a Bloody Mary and beignets, Cruiser bicycle rides past candy-colored cottages.
Southwest Airlines has direct flights from BWI to Panama City. Don’t forget suntan lotion and your book club read. By the time you get home, you’ll be able to put those coats away until next year.
Waxing Philosophical about Madame Tussaud’s
When I heard that Mme. Tussaud’s, the famous wax museum, was opening a branch in DC some years back, I rolled my eyes. Why go see wax figures of people when I lived in a place where I could visit actual sites of historical importance? Why see a fake Abe Lincoln when I could go to Ford’s Theatre or the Lincoln Memorial?
Touring a museum filled with famous people made of wax was cheating: cheap thrills and no intellectual heft.
I'd been taught to think this way in the eighties when I was part of a student group in London. Our cool professor pooh-poohed the idea of visiting the original Mme. Tussaud’s there in favor of more nourishing pursuits. For me, it was the first lesson in being a discerning traveler: some places had value, others didn't.
It stuck. Twenty-five years later, when I agreed to let my teenage children and niece choose a downtown destination on a recent outing, I cringed when they picked Mme. Tussaud's.
I decided I'd try to sneak "teaching moments" in wherever I could (and hope that no one I knew saw me going in the doors).
A bit of research revealed that there are not only celebrity and sports figures at the DC Tussaud's, but political figures as well. Surely some wax version of a president would spark a mini history lesson.
And a collaboration I found advertised online between the museum and local libraries ("Wax Figure Hunt at your Local DC Library!) let me know that the wax museum was trying to brush up its airhead reputation. They'd even dedicated a room to facts and figures relating to the making of wax figures---an average of 200 measurements for each face! Every single hair inserted individually!
But ultimately, even though I made them learn that the wax man with the impressive mutton-chop sideburns was President Chester A. Arthur, visiting Mme. Tussaud's was just one big photo op. (Ropes that used to keep tourists from nearing the figures have been removed and interaction is encouraged.)
After giving our children enriching opportunities and exposing them to challenging ideas, coaxing (or maybe dragging) them through their share of impressionist art exhibits and making them sit quietly at the ballet, appreciate Shakespeare, and stay awake at a symphony, they are, culturally speaking, quite well-fed. A little dessert from time to time should be okay.
It can be fine, once in a while, to pose like you’re friends with Malcolm X or Katie Couric; to pretend that Julia Roberts is leaning on your living room chair; to get in J. Edgar Hoover’s face; or to get a picture with Jackie O. Right?
What do you think? Can you explain the strange pleasure of staring at a wax Tom Cruise?
