Friends through friends, at first; Joe and I found ourselves closer when our friends graduated and left us. We would get together for dinner, or to go see a show around Charlottesville. We would spend a day replacing his car battery (an entire day was needed thanks to Joe's general lack of "handiness" and abhorrence of life's minutiae, like what type of engine resides in his car's engine compartment). And we would take trips to Northern Virginia to visit our deserter friends. On one such trip, I believe it was a birthday, or Halloween party, we ended up staying at Patrick McCreesh's apartment. Having attended the event the night prior, and having no other plans for ourselves through the week we decided to stay at least another day. Patrick, employed as he was, went off to work leaving Joe and I to figure out what to do with ourselves.
"You ever been to Annapolis?"
"Once as a kid, we took a field trip to the Naval Academy."
"Wanna go?"
That was probably the last time Joe asked me whether I wanted to go somewhere, preferring hence to simply tell me where we would be going. We climbed into the Accord and headed generally North. Joe's was an hilariously filthy car, whose darkly tinted windows served not to make Joe look cool, but simply to conceal the traveler's detritus that lay within. On this trip I would forget a copy of Wired (Joe pronounced it "weird") in his back seat only to recover it several years later, in the same spot I'd left it.
We listened to Ryan Adams while we wandered around trying to figure out how to get to the appropriate highway. We passed by the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church and Chevron, one of my favorite sites in all of Virginia (really, it's a gas station tucked beneath a church). Finding our way onto 95, we set off. We drove through the forested stretch between Baltimore and Washington at a leisurely pace; and Joe told me how he hated highways in the mid-Atlantic because of all the trees. To him, you should see in every direction for miles and miles without interruption from a proper highway. We joked it was so that you could see the tornado bearing down on you, not a common problem in Maryland.
We tore straight through Baltimore, pausing only to acknowledge that Camden Yards was easily one of the nicest ballparks to visit, but that, sadly, its home city was nothing to behold. By the time we arrived in Annapolis we were both starved, which might explain why we had such a hard time navigating our way out of the traffic circle that surrounds the Maryland State House. When we finally made it off the circle and down to the inner harbor, we parked and set about on our true goal: crab cakes.
We walked from the water up and down posh and boutiqued (it's a verb, you've seen it happen) streets that seemed alarmingly touristy despite their being rather few tourists. Amidst the couture studios, handmade furniture shops and boat rental offices we would pass bars and restaurants that each advertised that they had the best crab cakes in the city. What they failed to realize was that Joe and I measured the likelihood of our patronage based on cost almost exclusively. So having passed every door we chose the restaurant which listed the cheapest price for a crab cake sandwich. The bargain was enough that we even splurged on the crab cake appetizer; not realizing this was no more than the crab cake without the bun.
When we were done we made our way to a used record store, we knew there was sometime still before Patrick would be free from work, but we also knew that if we didn't leave soon we would be stuck in Baltimore traffic for sometime before encountering DC traffic. So we breezed through the record store and back to Joe's car, miraculously not ticketed despite us not realizing that the spot was metered. As we were pulling back into the traffic circle, Joe saw a sign pointing towards the Naval Academy.
"Do you think they would give us a tour?" He asked this as he veered the car off the circle and towards the Academy. I didn't think they would, my suspicions had a lot to do with the lockdown seen at most government facilities post-9/11. "Well, let's find out, maybe they'll at least let us wander around."
I really have no idea what inspired his interest in visiting the Naval Academy, but the fact that they might not show us around seemed to stoke his interest further, so that by the time we approached the gate he was almost preemptively livid at being rebuffed.
The MP, sidearm visible, lowered his head towards Joe's open window and greeted us with a stern, "Can I help you, gentlemen?"
"Hi, I was wondering whether we could have a tour, we're from out of state," I'm not sure whether the last bit had ever helped Joe's cause in infiltrating a space he had wanted to visit, but I was unsurprised when the MP declined Joe's request.
"Well, can we drive around a little and just have a look around?"
"No."
At this point the MP gave up trying to find out whether there was anything he could do for us and transitioned to telling us what we would be doing now. He told us he would be raising the gate and gestured to a small parking lot where we could turn around, we could then pull to the exit gate and he would raise it and let us out. He ended by suggesting that we avoid any funny business.
Joe pulled through, offering some unkind words about the MP and pointing out that he hadn't planned on any funny business he was just interested in looking around. A unique little squirrel had caught my eye, it was of the usual size and shape as the squirrels I have known, but it was bright red, it was a ginger squirrel. I pointed the squirrel out to Joe, as it darted along the curb ahead. He saw it and seemed to dismiss it, as he suddenly darted the vehicle towards the curb and then away, performing a U-turn just short of the lot the MP had pointed out to us. As he spun the wheel I had just a glimpse of the squirrel darting towards us, and then "Thump."
"Did you just run over that squirrel?"
Joe sped our retreat and said, "I think I did, do you think the Navy's going to be pissed?"
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