Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Awakening

I'd seen pictures of this statue before, but I didn't know it was in the DC area until just a few months ago. So this weekend I hopped on the Segway and went.
It's a 9-10 mile round trip that takes me across The National Mall. Of course, I was stupid enough to go on Memorial Day so the Mall was packed. The statue was packed, too, but I'm getting to that.

"The Awakening" is currently located at the tip of Hanes Point. It's a statue of a giant struggling to rise from the earth.
See it here at Google Maps. It's the brown spot.

The good sidewalks got me quite a distance, but about half a mile down the peninsula I was restricted to either the road or the sidewalk that runs right up against the river. That sidewalk hasn't been repaired in a really long time. Besides watching out for the hordes of fishermen all along the bank I also had to watch out for places that would drop my wheel through the sidewalk.
On the way back I came up the other side of the peninsula where the holes were big enough to drop the whole Segway in the river. After dodging a few of those I took the road the rest of the way back.

It's like going to see Santa. People were lined up to have the giant eat their babies. Yeah, if I'd walked down like I planned Gandolf would have gone in, too.


What is there to say about an arm?

...or a foot.

...or a hand.

Madness. Under the sun that day the metal was nearly blistering.

The best shot would be taken from about 30 ft above where I was.

No comments: