Oh, my aching dogs!!
That just about sums up how my feet felt the whole time. I have a low tolerance for pain, I admit, plus I’m a total puss. That said, I have to tell you that my damn feet HURT!
It started a week ago when I noticed a big hole in the sole of one of my tenner shoes (that’s Ohio-speak for what the rest of you refer to as ’sneakers’). I went out and got a new pair and the next day I wore them to the gym. I came home with a big blister on my little toe on my left foot. A couple days later I got a second, bigger one on the heel of my right foot. Then I remembered that I was going to be marching around Washington in the upcoming weekend. Oh no!
Before we started driving to DC, Greg helped me bandage my feet up and when we got to Washington Saturday night everything felt fine. We looked at a few monuments first, then attended the HIV/AIDS Rally and Vigil. By that time I was getting sore. The Rally had low attendance, with only about 500 people there. The speakers were good and their messages were well received, but they were speaking to an audience composed mostly of older men with HIV. It was kind of like preaching to the choir.
It was a three hour event, but after two hours the sun had gone down and the wind picked up and Greg and I (especially me) were waaaay underdressed and we started freezing. So we wandered away, missing the candlelight vigil. We found our way to 14th Street and a cool restaurant called Thai Tanic. Thanks for the hot tip Blobby.
After dinner I stood up to find my feet hurt REALLY bad! But we managed to walk down P street to Dupont Circle. There are supposedly lots of gay bars in that big gay neighborhood but we didn’t know where any of them were. The only bar I was familiar with was The Fireplace down at the end of P street.
We went in there and had a beer and talked to a local guy who surprisingly was from Ohio but moved to DC as a kid 35 years ago. He easily spotted us as out-of-towners because of the big camera hanging around my neck. He was very friendly and we had fun talking to him.
That was the first bar I had been in for over a year. In fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been in another bar since the last time I was in DC and went to that same bar and watched American Idol with a bunch of loud, drunk strangers. That turned out to be really fun.
After a while we left and went back to our motel where Greg instantly fell asleep and I nursed my blisters. I started thinking about not even going to the March the next day. What a wasted trip this would have been.
I’ll tell you more in Part 3 
