Day Fifteen

Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Distance: 5.6 Miles

After a great day through the District of Columbia I set out on a slow day. It was still raining at midday and I sought out a movie theater. I saw Battle: Los Angeles, I should have waited fifteen minutes for Sucker Punch - ideally I would have been able to wait three days for the premiere of Hanna. Spoiler Alert. The movie was decent war porn with terrible dialogue, clichéd exposition, a predictably triumphant conclusion, and incompletely visually-realized extraterrestrials. To its credit death reaped dispassionately with wide sweeps, and the audience's perspective and knowledge was sharply limited to that of the characters being followed. This created an intense dissection scene which was novel, high-stakes, and gripping. That acquisition of knowledge with the characters felt visceral, brutish, necessary, and life-saving.

After the movie, I resupplied at a Whole Foods. I bought Clif Bars, dried fruit, cheese, pepperoni, and bread. I linked up with US Route 50, which may end up being a significant portion of my way west.

At the end of the day I found myself in a bizarre scene at a McDonalds. A bearded, middle-aged, slightly-retarded gentleman was yelling through an amiable conversation with an elderly hetero- couple. Behind me was a homeless man lurking in and out of the rear exit sporting a poncho-shawl-survival suit made of garbage bags. This wasn't cute or absent-minded behavior; it was unsettling and purposeful with both feet firmly planted in the state of eery.

I retired to a motel for a day off.