I made it to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear last week-end in Washington, DC, and it was a lot of fun but very crowded. I didn’t have a sign, but I did wear a tie-dye shirt I made in a US flag pattern just for the occasion.

I arrived by plane around 9 am and took the Metro toward the mall to get my first taste of the crowds. The Metro cars were already crowded when I got on and were soon too full for anyone else to squeeze in (reminiscent of Japanese subways, but without the packers). From there I walked against the masses to meet Bill at the hotel. By the time we got to the mall around 10:30, the front sections were already full and gated off. We were lucky to get a spot within view of a video screen, as they obviously didn’t have enough screens for everyone to see one. With so few screens, the crowd was packed very tight where we were, and I ended up standing in about 1 square foot of space for over four hours, which is much more exhausting than it sounds.

The stage entertainment was very good, and it was a delight to see my favorite comedian, Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci, give the benediction for the rally. But the real rally, of course, was all the people there. I was really surprised to see so many older people and families attending and carrying signs. In hindsight, I wish I had paid more attention to the people than the stage.

I spent the next morning touring the mall monuments and as a bonus got to see a lot of the Marine Corps Marathon. There was something inspiring about seeing thousands of people running while thousands of other people cheered them on. I never saw the beginning or end of the runners, and I had to jog with them a little ways each time I want to cross the street.

“Tomorrow I’ll take you to Raleigh, because that’s our biiiiig city. So what’s France like?”

Flipping through the local paper, the Moutain Breeze, we saw that my dad, Buddy Gregg, was the “golfer of the month” with a nice picture of him and his dog Elmer, a. k. a. my step-brother.

To my surprise the Prius got great mileage even in the mountains, getting over 52 MPG traveling around Lake Lure and Asheville. I guess that regenerative breaking is good for something.

The Prius loved the flat roads of the coast, getting over 54 MPG for the trip. It’s the first time I’ve seen it get better city mileage than highway mileage since it could often get by on battery power for a few blocks at a time. The coast is probably a decent approximation of the actual EPA test.

In an effort to keep up with the Jones’s, Bonnie and I went to the NC mountains for the week-end. The photo is of Bald Mountain, I think. It’s one of the mountains around Lake Lure. I got to use my kayak for the first time since my Dad took it up to their house there, but most of the time was spent racing him with Gran Turismo. He won most of the time.

Neither I nor anyone I have talked to since had heard of Hyco Lake. Apparently it’s a somewhat of a secret (don’t tell anyone). It’s a very large private lake about a hour north of RTP near the Virginia border and is owned by the power company there. The lake was built for cooling the coal-burning power plant, and as a side-effect the water was pleasantly warm for swimming.