Fifteen of my schoolmates and I recently embarked on a week-long trip to Washington, D.C. and New York City. The primary purpose of this trip for the five of us who are on the school newspaper staff was to get away from the goofy reporters who have been following us around lately, trying to engage us in annoying conversations.
GOOFY REPORTER: What would you do if, because of the April Fool’s issue of the Tiger Times, the school district were to suspend its publication?
ME: I would buy an Uzi and wipe out the better part of a Vons check-out line.
We all met at 4:00 one Saturday morning, took a bus to Ontario airport, and hopped on a plane, where they promptly tried to eliminate the over-booking problem by feeding us healthy-sized globs of what they probably expected us to think were eggs but that actually more closely resembled, in both taste and texture, soggy tree bark. Since we were all extremely hungry, however, we had no choice but to push the tray aside and nibble on our seat cushions (which, they graciously informed us, could be used as floatation devices if we should happen to make an emergency ocean landing while flying over, say, Kansas).
We flew on TWA (slogan: “We Make You Feel Glad to be on Solid Ground Again”) to Baltimore International, where we were met by our tour-guide/bus driver, whose name was — I swear — Elvis. For those who have been wondering what happened to The King, he is now an illiterate man driving a bus in Maryland (which is pretty much what I’ve thought all along).
Anyway, Elvis herded us onto his bus, where we soon realized that we were trapped and would have no choice but to listen to his Washington, D.C. spiel, which was at best incoherent and at worst made one think that one had bees caught in one’s inner ears.
After taking us to dinner, Elvis took us to the Washington Monument. This particular monument was fairly awe-inspiring, but you could tell the government was in charge of building it. At the bottom, there are all these drawings of the various ideas for the monument that weren’t used. All of them are very ornate and beautiful and spectacular, except for the one they actually chose to use, which resembles a 555-foot white pencil. Leave it to the U.S. Government to insult its forefather by stacking a bunch of white bricks as a memorial to him. I’m glad I’m not a forefather.
We eventually arrived at our hotel, which was in Williamsburg, Virginia. For those of you who have never visited the metropolitan wonderland of Williamsburg, Virginia, let me give you a word of advice: Don’t. It was such a hole in the wall that we all found ourselves wishing we were back in Lake Elsinore, where at least there are some decent frozen yogurt places (847 of them, in fact). It is doubtful at this point that the residents of Williamsburg could even spell “yogurt,” let alone freeze it.
The only thing we could find to do at our hotel was order Domino’s Pizza and hang around the lobby, eating it, and belching. I think the hotel was glad to see us leave the next day.
Next week: Jamestown, Williamsburg, and authentic colonial women’s-libbers.