Rum Soaked Monument Tours

The other weekend I realized I have two man caves -- one in my basement with a full bar, and a second in the garage when I set up a wooden table and plastic chairs as a smoking lounge next to the 50-year-old car.

Found myself there with my old friend Jason at 3:00am, smoking and waiting to perhaps catch late-night activities in the alley behind my house.

Jason and I had mixed rum-heavy Zombie Cocktails after everyone ate a bushel-load of crabs and left. Man, this is why I love having a home bar. At 3:00am while listening to sea chanteys on the stereo, Jason and I were grinding ice, squeezing lemons and limes, pushing pineapple through a strainer, measuring brown sugar and bitters, and pouring Bacardi 151 into a cocktail that was created by Don the Beachcomber back in 1934.

And then we took advantage of the fact that we were in Washington DC: while sitting in my garage smoking Marlboro Lights, we decided to pump up the bike tires and head down to the Mall and take a dark tour of the monuments. I tore up the garage for the pump, and we headed down.

We hit the Einstein Memorial, Vietnam, Lincoln, World War II, and Korean War Memorial.

Touring monuments in the daytime sober is not nearly as good as taking a leisurely bike ride in the cool summer evening with a good buzz rolling when no tourists are in sight. That's the kind of drunken moment that can get me all philosophical and nearly teary-eyed.

Sitting in Einstein's lap felt like I understood the Theory of Relativity -- looking up at the stars in the sky and down at the solar system inlay in the black marble. The glowing white stone of the World War II Memorial made me babble about my late grandfather who was in the Navy from '33 to '63 -- a subject that gets me. And the Korean War Memorial, man -- it's really worth seeing lit up at night.

Jase, in the lap of genius:



And looking for the Big Dipper in the inlays:



Lincoln at night:



The Gettysburg Address at 4:00am:



That eerie view of over-sized soldiers in Korea: