Washington D.C.

Tyler and I got to go to Washington D.C. to present our research at the Annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) Conference. This is a really prestigious opportunity, and we were really lucky to be able to go. We both took the work we'd done for our Master's degrees and complied them into paper form. Then, back in August, we submitted the papers to be reviewed. In October we were told that we were both accepted to present, podium style (i.e. not a poster, more like a lecture), if we agreed to make the specified changes to our reports. Less than 25% of the papers submitted to this HUGE international conference are chosen for this type of a presentation. We were VERY excited! We worked hard to make the papers ready for resubmission, and sent them back to the examiners in November. In January, we prepared out presentations and headed off to D.C. We arrived 2 days before the conference to prepare. On Sunday, we went to a local Ward in D.C. It's the Chevy Chase ward. How cool is that name?! The old meetinghouse was also very neat. You can't really tell from the outside, but it's OLD and they've kept all the old detailing inside.

We went to catch the subway and I noticed some people not wearing pants. I mentioned to Tyler that something must be going on, and Tyler looked at one of the guys and said, "Oh, he's just in running shorts." I pointed to the girl in the hot pink undies pictured here and said, "is she in running shorts, too?" After seeing here, he realized something MUST be up. Someone asked them why they weren't wearing pants and they responded, "what are you talking about?" Needless to say, it was quite a scene. Young and old, male and female, all wearing coats, hats, backpacks, boots, you name it, just not pants. I looked it up on line later and it's just a pants-less protest. They have no cause, they're just messing around. It started in NY and spread out from there. It was FREEZING outside. They're all NUTS!

We rode the subway to Arlington Cemetery, just in time to see them close the gates. So we decided to reenact our summer trip here, and we walked across the bridge into D.C. As you can see from my picture, I was FREEZING, and I wasn't going to mess around!

See? I know how to keep warm!

The Washington Monument

All our pictures from the summer trip to D.C. magically disappeared, so we did out best to take a bunch. D.C. in the winter is great, there are SO fewer people around!

The Lincoln Memorial

Cute, huh? We saw another couple do it, and copied.

World War II monument

Washington

Hawaii

Utah!

The Washington Monument

Riding the Subway

The Washington Monument in the day time

The Capitol

View from the top of the Washington Monument!

Heading down

The wind at that memorial is INSANE

Tyler, just after presenting. He did AMAZING!! He presented right after me. It was VERY cool to be able to present that way.

Us with Dr. Guthrie, our mentor

The group that went to D.C.

Tyler was flying our the afternoon that we presented, so he packed his bag and we took the subway to Arlington. This was the last sight on his, "I REALLY want to see this" list.

One of the other research assistants, Shar

The guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Tomb

Changing of the Guard
It was VERY cool

The coliseum behind the tomb

On our way out, we saw this. I guess when you're buried in Arlington, your casket is carried by horse. What an honorable experience.

Thought this was cool.

Tyler had to run to catch his plane, so Shar and I walked from Arlington over to D.C. again. I took pictures of her around the monuments, then we headed to the white house.

We decided to get pretzels. It was a GOOD decision! We took pictures of each other eating them. :)

The Smithsonian Information Center

The Capitol

I flew home the next day. It was a very fun trip. I'm SO glad that Tyler got to come this year. On a side note, I heard, yesterday, that my paper has been accepted for publication in the Transportation Research Record (TRR)!!! This is a hardbound reference volume that is used by researchers in my field very heavily. VERY COOL!!!! :) If I do say so myself....