Washington DC — Capital Mall at Dawn

7 June 2010

Originally, we had planned to be in Asia for three weeks this summer, about 10 days in Hong Kong and then 10 days in Beijing. But the Beijing leg had to be trimmed to just 4 days because of a meeting that I'm now attending in Washington. It's a study of the Institute of Medicine (an arm of the National Academies of Science). The committee is deliberating and will write a report about how future climate change might lead to changes in indoor air quality and how these changes would affect public health.



Being associated the the process is interesting and it reminds me how big the gap is between what scientists believe and the public perception in the US on the climate change issue. For scientists, the debate on "is climate change happening?" is long over. The question now: "what are we going to do in response?" The alternatives: mitigate, adapt, and suffer the consequences. We'll likely do some of all three and the mix will matter a lot.



Traveling economy on United has become unpleasant so I decided to give Virgin America a try. It was a pleasant alternative, up to and in some ways better than the experience of flying on Southwest or Jet Blue. Even though we were in a narrow body plane (A320), there was seat-back entertainment. I also bought a laptop internet connection ($13) for the duration and was able to get 3+ h of work done en route.



The only bad part of this trip is that my body has no clue where I am. We had three nights in California and I hadn't adjusted to jet lag, which seems to be much tougher traveling east than west. Sleeping has been a problem; not falling asleep, but staying asleep through the night. On the first night, I woke up at 3 AM and after trying to sleep until 5 finally just got up and went for a walk.



As the photos show, it was a lovely morning. From the Hotel Monaco, where the committee members are staying, it's about a half mile to the Capital Mall, about half way between the Washington Monument and the Capital Building. I logged about 5 miles walking out to the Capital Dome just as the sun was rising, then headed over the World War II memorial just past the Washington Monument.



These photos were shot on the trusty old CoolPix. Now that I've been working with my Nikon D40 for almost a year, it's hard to go back to this more portable but less powerful camera. Still, the photos are okay...