Geneve and I hightailed it to Washington D.C. on Friday to hang with my buddy Ali for the long weekend. The trip reinforced my previous impression of D.C., which is to say that the town is a cool place. It's an interesting mix of North and South, best exemplified in the architecture--you can walk down a street that has Northern-style brownstones and colonial houses, and Southern-style brick mini-mansions with huge columns, all on the same block.

Ali hadn't done many of the monuments since we had bounced down to D.C. for Clinton's inauguration in 1992, so we hit up the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, cruised by the Capitol Building on our way to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and tossed the disc on the fields beneath the Washington Monument.

The White House was impressive--seeing one of the symbols of American government in real life and during these unstable times evoked a reaction of awe. Good or bad, this is a place where things happen. There were numerous people standing outside the gates, many of whom were not speaking English.

The Lincoln Memorial was also impressive. It's larger than I expected, and the Gettysburg Address is inscribed on the walls, which raised the story of how Lincoln wrote the speech on the back of an envelope in 20 minutes. The statue of Lincoln looks out onto the reflection pool and the Washington Monument in the distance--quite a spectacular view.

Aside from the monuments and Air and Space Museum (which was interesting but exhausting), we ate well (at L'Enfant, Raku, and a N'awlins-style cafe) drank--Gazuza and another chilled-out place across from Ali's apartment--cruised around Georgetown, and, of course, watched some basketball.

It was good to get away, and provided a great beginning to our first of three weekends out of Connecticut.

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• [-Washington, D.C.-]