Having escaped the clutches of Washington DC without having spied the Dubya, we have made our way back down to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

We lined up to get White House tour tickets while we were in Washington, having asked the visitor centre what time to arrive to get tickets. They had told us to be there at 7:30am, so we got up at 6:00am, jumped on the train at Greenbelt (closest station to the National Park where we were staying) and went in to get in line. Arriving in the line at 7:45am, we were told by the guard that there was only a small chance we’d get tickets since people had been in line since 4:30am and the last people they’d guaranteed tickets to had arrived at 6:15am. We stuck it out, hoping to get lucky, but there was no chance at all. Speaking with other people who missed out later, anyone arriving after 6:42am missed out.

The main reason for the disappointment is apparently that Dubya did not like the idea of White House tours and so cut the number in half pretty much as soon as he came into office. Therefore, if we’d been there while Clinton was in the office, we’d have gotten tickets. With Dubya’s rules, we missed out. Not happy, since we got up at 6:00am!!!

Went to the FBI building to go on a tour there. Rather disappointing since they took 35 people in a group, and the area you could fit people into for each area was about 12-14. The guide just started speaking and anyone in the back missed out because he was walking away by the time they got to the exhibit. There was no chance to ask questions at all, and the person we had spoke so rapidly and mumbled so much that he was nigh impossible to understand. It was rather telling at the end of the tour because we’d heard the other tours ahead of us finishing with rounds of applause from each group. At the end of our tour, everyone just walked off, and he did not get a single compliment or clap since we were all so disappointed to have waited two hours to get someone so pathetic as a guide.

Checked out the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in the afternoon, which was quite interesting, but there were too many kids. Okay, so you’e sitting there thinking we have to expect that, so I will clarify it - there were too many kids and not enough attentive parents and teachers. One major difference we’ve noticed between Australia and the US is the level of devotion parents go to here for their kids.

We met one woman in the line at the FBI buiilding who was there, having missed out on White House tickets, calling her children to get them out of bed so they could come and join her now it was not so cold and early. This was not isolated, in that many parents seemed to be doing the same thing. Also, when it came to the Smithsonian, there were kids running everywhere and screaming but not one adult telling them to calm down a little (they were overstepping the “boisterous” mark and into the “running into people and causing damage to exhibits” mark). No control at all.

Di and I are just looking at all these kids and thinking what they need is a good smack on the bum to sort them out. We would have been killed for doing some of the stuff these kids are getting away with, and we did not have super-strict parents. We just knew where we stood, and we reminded when we forgot. Okay, my rant is over - I’ll calm down now…

Moving on to less stressful matters - let me tackle the issue of banks…*grin* In one of those “why does this stuff happen to me?” tales, I went to the bank yesterday to get rid of some change in the ashtray. We had accumulated 100 pennies, so I took them into the bank to get them converted to a $1 note.

The teller looked up at me with a look of disdain and we had the following conversation…

Bank Teller (BT): “You have to roll them first.”

Me (blankly): “Roll them?”

BT: “Yeah, you need to roll them before we take them.”

Me: “You might need to clarify that. I’m not sue what you mean, but I’m guessing you don’t mean I should roll them from one end of the bank to the other. What do you mean roll them?”

BT: “Put them in a roll.”

Me: “Um, what roll?”

BT: “Don’t you have a roll?”

Me: “Nope. Got a bread roll in the car.” (trying to diffuse the fact I am looking really stupid now)

BT (rolling eyes): “I’ll go get you a roll then.”

Me (relieved): “Thank you.”

She returned with a couple of small pieces of flat cardboad and handed them over to me. I thought this was a very strange situation and looked at them blankly while I tried to figure out how they worked. She quickly grabbed one, and folded it out so it made a sort of octagon shape and then gestured to put the coins in the end.

Me: “Don’t you have a better method of getting small coins counted than this? Like a set of scales and you just weigh them?”

BT: “Nope.”

Me: “And the customer has to count the coins and put them in the roll?”

BT: “Yep.”

Me: “This is not something a teller has to do? Wow.”

I went back over to another bench to clear the line and try to put these fiddly little pennies into a cardboard roll that really did not seem large enough for them to fit into. The first few attempts, I put coins all over the place, distributing them evenly over the foot or two around me on the bench.

I should point out that all this time, there was a guy at the far end of the bank getting more and more angry and aggressive by the second. Apparently he wanted to cash a cheque, and he needed three forms of ID - an account number, a diver’s licence and a non-driver’s licence photo ID. He had an account number, a Virginia car driver’s licence and a Virginia truck driver’s licence, but the bank would not accept the third one since it was technically not a “non-licence photo ID”.

They advised him to go to his own branch where they would know him, but he could not get to that branch before they closed at 2pm (a lot of banks close at that time here!). Also, he would have had to drive to the other side of Virginia and then back to spend the money he wanted right there and then.

He had a decent point and I have to agree that the bank should have given him the money, but the way he was going about it was rather frightening. He was screaming at people and looking like he was about to punch them at any moment. He was using the “F” word in a variety of ways I’d not even heard myself about 4-5 times per sentence, kicking poles, slamming his fist down on benches and computers and generally being extremely intimidating. He was dressed in clothes that suggested he might be carrying a gun (don’t forget I am really paranoid about angry Americans and assume they all are ready to shoot) and so there was me, trying desperately to blend into the background and not make sudden noises to attract his attention. Meanwhile, I am spraying pennies around the bank, bouncing on the bench and tiled floor again and again, terrified that he’s going to pull out a handgun and shoot me at any second.

He finally decided he was not getting anywhere with the bank staff, so stormed toward the door, knocked over the portable barriers that formed the queue for tellers, kicked the glass door so hard I thought he was about to put his foot through it, and then roared:

“Fine f***ing way to run a f***ing bank. I’m f***ing come back to sort this out, f***ers!”

Okay, so now I am really worried this guy is going out to his car and returning with a shotgun to just start blazing away. The staff and other people in the bank were clearly rattled as well, since there was no nervous giggling, and a lot of concerned looks, which delighted me even less. I finally got the two rolls with all the coins in them, one with 60 and one with 40 and raced over to the teller to get out of there.

BT: “How many coins in each one?”

Me: “Well, it says I can fit 50 in each, but I got 60 in that one and I don’t know what to do with them. Can I just have my dollar and go?”

BT: “You’re only supposed to put 50 in each.”

Me: “I didn’t know that. I don’t know how they work. I just filled one and assumed that was 50.”

BT: “You’e only supposed to put 50 in each.”

Me (nervously eyeing the door, watching for gun-toting psychopaths): “Can we just count them, you can see there are 100 and then I can go? You told me to roll them - I don’t know how to do it - I am just rolling them over to you and you can do it now. I’m sorry. Please, I’d just like to go.”

BT (exasperated): “Look, I’ll show you how to do it!”

I watched as she gently opened the roll at one end, lined up 50 pennies on the palm of her other hand, and then experienced a sweet feeling of delight as 16 of them fell to the bench and the remaining 34 took off across the floor, under the photocopier, got stuck in cracks near benches, under seats, everywhere they could roll to, up to 12 feet away.

Me: “Ah, I see now what I was supposed to do. I should have just distributed them evenly on the floor.”

BT: “Oh dear me. Oh dear me. Oh dear me.”

As all four tellers scampered around behind the benches, picking up the coins, I waited until they’d found all 100. The teller finally got them into two rolls, and then gave me a $1 note with a look on her face that clearly expressed she was not pleased to have gone to so much effort and pain just to change 100 pennies to a single note.

And the moral of this story is? I finally learned why it is that wherever you go in the US, people have thrown pennies into wishing wells or creeks or any body of water they can find. No matter where you go, from a National Park to Disneyland, there are pennies in every fountain and stream. After all the hassles to get them changed, I now know why.

The other moral of the story? If you are loud and angry and looking like you’re about to go get a weapon from the car and return to shoot up a bank - you have my full and undivided attention!

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001