Marathon

So My sister ran in the Marine Corps Marathon this past Sunday. I thought it would be a lot of fun to take Sam down to see her do it. We took the metro and he loved it! No joke, he was standing on my leg peering out the window watching the skyline rush past us. It was incredible. He would bounce up and down and just stare as everything would fall behind us. It was very cool. Took a few pics of it as well. We get to Rosalyn and holy hell! It is pack like no other!

tangent: we were sitting in our seat when a lady sat down next to us and Sam looked at her and smiled. He just kept staring at her and then we get to the metro stop and she gets up. He starts to fuss and he's getting cranky and looks up to see her still looking at him and he stops right away and smiles! Hah, such a ladies man!

Tangent 2: I was telling this story later on that evening to Alice's father and Alice added the comment, "Patrick was like, 'at least we know he's not gay!'" which her mom is, and her dad says, "he gets those lady watching genes from me!" and I said, "to be fair, he could have also gotten them from Alice's mom!" oops! and we're back in.

So yeah, this event was so crowded and we're only down in the subway terminal. We can't move and they're corralling us like cows getting ready to meet our ancestors! My parents had said when they arrived earlier that the escalator's had stopped working. Rosalyn's a good 100 yards straight up by stairs. And with a baby? Wow, this was going to be fun. However, the escalator had been fixed by the time we got there and so Sam and I rode up, single file, to the top and got out. And what was waiting for us?

PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE!!

To give you an idea of how many people were in this city at this moment, the race had over 30,000 runners. So imagine, each one of them bringing at least 2 family members. Then imagine 2/3rds of them bringing 2 family members and friends. Then imagine 1/2 of those people bringing 2 family members and friends with children. Yeah, it was pretty ridiculous. The nice thing was that you could definitely move. It wasn't like 95 traffic where you're not sure if you're going to move or just sit there. Everyone was on the go. It was such a spectacular event though. People were all around hugging and laughing and cheering. There were bands playing, food vendors, other people selling stuff. Very chaotic but very controlled. A guy who must've been at the finish line was talking through the speakers, interviewing a few people here and there that just finished (I swore I heard him interview my old band director) and calling out people who crossed through the finish line. You could hear stories from some passerby's about how they had someone run with them or talk with just keep them going. A very inspirational time!

I arrived at 12:15ish. I was expecting Colleen to be finished around 12:30 but turns out she didn't finish until 1:30. I had to be back in Frederick by 4:00 so we could pick Alice up and go to her dad's at 4:30 for dinner. It took me 2 hours to get to Rosalyn. So I'm guessing I had to leave by 2. So I literally saw Colleen, gave her a hug, took a picture, told her congrats and goodbye. Just not enough time in my busy life! Sam and I started walking back to the Metro and met a wonderful crowd! And this time, it was like 95 traffic. It was not moving! So we are stuck in this mess and when we slip into the middle of it all, Sam decides that now is the perfect time to scream his little head off! I don't know if he was hungry, tired, tired of being in the bjourn, or scared of being stuck in with all of these people, but these were loud, ear splitting screams! I didn't know what to do! So I did the first thing that popped in my head: I smacked him across the face over and over, until he slumped unconsciously on my chest!

Just kidding!

I left the metro. We sat down and I gave him a bottle to eat which he unenthusiastically ate. I then began to think that he wouldn't handle that crowd and I had no choice but to ride the metro. I figured that if we could walk to the next metro stop then he might be calm enough to enter. Also, there might be less people at that stop. So we started walking.

Foggy Bottom is the next stop. Which is basically 2 miles away. Carrying a baby. And a diaper bag. Awesome. The thing that sucks the most about this part is that walking all that way only got me 1 metro stop up! And the train was still packed! We couldn't sit down and he started to cry again. But I was like, i have no choice here! People are just going to deal with it. At one point I was leaning over to feed him a bottle as he laid in the bjourn to drink. I wasn't about to take him out and set him down or carry him and then have to start trying to get on the train. There weren't a whole lot of options at this point! But once we started to move Sam calmed down a lot. And then when we got on the red line there were less people and a nice lady (who offered Sam a cookie!) let us sit down. The last stop before ours he started to cry so loud that the people sitting in front of me got up and walked to the opposite side to sit down. But as soon as they left he stopped so those people probably smelled bad anyway! Our stop was next and we were home!

And that's the story of how I met your mother. back at frederick. and we were late.