"Head...Shoulders...Knees and...SOCKS!"

One thing I love most about living and working in our nation's capitol is the insane number of tourists that flock to this great city on a daily basis. Most of them seem to be middle school kids who are on their school's annual big trip to Washington, or high school kids who are here for some sort of leadership program. Don't even get me started on the summer interns - especialy the Hill interns who think they are all that. But I digress...

Today was a beautiful day, and so Spouse, Child, and I piled into the car and headed to one of our favorite parks in the city. Child got to run around and have fun with bubbles (one of his favorite words, then again he really only has a distinct vocabulary of 10-12 words) we got to hang out and relax and participate in the fun game of "Where are they from?" The park was pretty busy - you had the oh-so-cool motorcyclists on their flashy Honda cycles - who looked did look cool until one fell over, the military air patrol doing a flyover (they were so low, that we could see one guy leaning out of the helicopter window waving at us), lots of other families with kites and bubbles, and the cyclists who were taking a break at their halfway point (one of whom turned out to be a friend we hadn't seen since the Fall of 2000). Lastly added to the mix were BUSLOADS of kids wearing matching fleece vests and id badges around their necks. We figured due to their group's composition, they were probably from the East Coast. Usually, most groups are easily distinguished by their tacky matching t-shirts or even tackier matching hats. Having travelled multiple times with a large group of teenagers, I understand why this is useful, but come on - it's like wearing a huge sandwich board that reads "HI I'M BUCKY FROM IOWA - YOU CAN STEAL MY WALLET WHILE I WRECK HAVOCK AT PENTAGON CITY MALL TOMORROW NIGHT FROM 7-9PM!"

Eventually curosity got the best of us and we asked one of the chaperones where they were from. We had it narrowed down to Delaware or Massachusetts. Turns out they were in town for some leadership conference (natch) and the kids were from 40 different states. And didn't those nifty vests help out last month when it was so cold and they were in Gettysburg! They were soon replaced by a large group of middle school kids from Pittsburgh who were all wearing matching "Adelai Stevenson Class of 2004" T-shirts and very ugly stars and stripes caps.

Despite all of these extra people overrunning our city and suburban malls, and as much as we locals complain about it, it is great to see them back here. This has really been the first Spring since September 11th that things seem back to the way they were tourist-wise. Which is nice to see that despite all the other obvious changes to the city (heavy security even at museums, street closings, military fly-overs) it is nice to see that some things around here have gone back to normal.