Washington D.C.

Every year, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) has it Annual meeting in Washington D.C. About 10.000 engineers gather in three hotels to meet and listen to one of the 30-40 parallel sessions or about 20 committee meetings. Remember these sessions and meetings are not after another but are the average number of presentations and meetings at the same time! It is quite a puzzle to figure out where to go. All day long, TRB operates a bus service between the three venue hotel and the about 5 overflow hotels where people sleep. Also this year I attended this 4 day meeting. I won’t bore you with what I learned during the Annual meeting.

In addition to my stay at the conference I also book an extra night at a hotel close to the Capitol. Thursday morning, after the last session at the annual meeting, I rushed back to the hotel, got a lunch, and took a cab to my hotel.

Amazingly all the drivers in all cabs I took in Washington D.C. were senior citizens. When I tried to reach them the money I owned them, they just couldn’t get it, because the movement of their arms was limited (because of their age). The drivers also wouldn’t come out of their cab to get my suitcase from the trunk. Apart from these minor inconveniences the pros outweighed the cons: they don’t drive like Michael Schumacher, have an exceptional memory of street names, and finally getting across town will only cost you a few dollars.

My hotel was only a few blocks away from the historic government center of the US, i.e. The Mall. This is a one mile long, and 300 feet wide area with on one side the Capitol, in the middle Washington monument, a little to the side the White House and at the other hand Lincoln Memorial.

The Mall is named after The Mall in St. James Park in Londen. This was a strip of land was used in the 18th century to play a French ball game, i.e. Paille Maille (or later in English: Pall Mall). This game has some similarities with golf and croquet. In Pall Mall the ball is struck with a mallet through an arch of iron.

While the golden hour already had started I walked from the Capitol, past the Washington monument towards Lincoln memorial. Lincoln memorial is always a little dark, but unfortunately a tripod is not allowed inside Lincoln memorial. Only from where the marble steps stopped I was allowed to set up my tripod. As a consequence I had to wait a while until everyone got out of my picture. Especially to get Lincoln words and the bright white marble correctly exposed isn’t easy.








After I took the picture above, I returned to my hotel. When I wanted to setup my tripod again to take another night shot of the Capitol, a security guard told me that I was not allowed to set up a tripod on Capitol grounds. Luckily I already had the shots I wanted.