Dave Thomas Circle

This is Part I in a series on curiosities about my (relatively) new home, the District of Columbia. Today, we discuss Traffic Circles.

Pierre L’Enfant was a jerk.

Sure, the street grid he set out for DC has some truly fantastic public spaces and grand boulevards, but all the monumental axes and diagonal streets really slice up the available space, leaving lots of unusual triangles and pocket parks. Pretty much all of those spaces within the central part of DC are governed by the National Park Service, who controls 637 distinct parcels for recreation and presumably the eventual installation of monuments to increasingly benign national figures and historical events. In total, the NPS possesses some 6,700 acres out of the 39,300 acres (land only) of the District. That’s about 17% of the District, and when you add in other federal land it brings the total up to about 23%... which is still lower than 12 other states. (Nevada is 84% federal land!)

Anyway, several of these spaces are circular. A few are technically roundabouts, but the vast majority of them have some form of signalization and are therefore classified as traffic circles. All in all, there are 34 circles in the District of Columbia, of which 31 are named after noteworthy people. However, recent developments at one intersection have raised that total up to 35, as we’ll see in a moment. But first, some Traffic Circle Trivia!

The Smallest Circle

Anna J. Cooper Circle is the smallest named circle. There are several smaller ones, but they’re little more than mini-roundabouts with some grass in the middle.

Cooper Circle has benches and trees!

The Largest Circle

The largest circle is Dupont Circle, for which the neighborhood I live in is named. The landscaped part in the center is a whopping 360’ across and is home to a fountain, a half dozen chessboards, 1200 linear feet of benches, and a small population of homeless people who seem to enjoy shouting at passersby on Friday and Saturday nights and at each other all of the other nights of the week.

Massachusetts Avenue is busy enough that it gets express lanes (blue) around the inside of the circle, but Connecticut Avenue traffic is even heavier, so it gets a tunnel under the circle (green).

If you want to get technical about it, Grant, Logan, and Sherman Circles are also 360’ across; however, Dupont Circle lies at the intersection of 10 different spokes, so I’m inclined to give it the “largest” crown. Between the 10 roads, 104,000 vehicles traverse Dupont Circle every weekday… and that’s really quite a lot. Even the busiest stretch of highway in all of Richmond (I-95/I-64 at Belvedere) only carries 126,000 vehicles/day.

The Least Circular Circle

Many traffic circles have been modified over the years to better handle the ever-increasing volumes of commuter traffic present along DC’s roadways. Dupont had a tunnel and express lanes installed, but at least it’s still a circle. Not all “circles” have been so lucky – many have had the primary road punched through the center, and in some cases all that remains of the circle are some glorified frontage roads, much like the ones found at Wesley Circle near American University.

The Maryland-Isn’t-A-Team-Player Circle

DC has a thing for perimeter roadways. Nearly all of its border with Maryland is marked by roads with uncreative names like “Southern Avenue,” and like many other major intersections in the District some intersections along these roads have circles as well. Most of them straddle the border, but Pinehurst Circle in Chevy Chase doesn’t quite line up properly.

The Newest “Circle”

New York Avenue carries US 50 from downtown out towards Annapolis. There used to be a traffic circle at its intersection with Florida Avenue, but eventually traffic volumes got so high along New York Ave (currently about 60,000 vehicles per day) that the District decided to take out the circle and put in a traffic light that favored commuter traffic. However, the redevelopment of several commercial corridors along Florida Avenue – U Street to the north and H Street to the south – has meant that a the side street volumes are swiftly approaching the limit of what the signal can handle, and there simply isn’t room for more traffic lanes.

The intersection is kind of a big deal.

When this happens, pretty much the only way to improve traffic flow is to find some way to reduce the amount of lost time in the signal’s cycle, and that usually means removing phases. By reducing the number of times the signal has to switch in a given cycle, the amount of time lost to yellow and all-red signals is reduced, giving a corresponding reduction in the delay experienced by vehicles since more of the cycle is spent with the light showing green.

Another issue at this intersection is a common one in DC – everything’s simply too close together. L’Enfant’s diagonal streets certainly make trips shorter, but they also confound the street grid. At the intersection of New York and Florida, there were 5 intersections within a 50-yard radius, which made coordination of the signals somewhat tricky.

So after a long period of study, what the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT to you and me… even their logo is just “d.”) decided to do is to create a virtual traffic circle using the existing street network. First, they kept traffic along New York Avenue as it was, except they prohibited left turns from the main roadway. Next, they converted a block each of Florida Avenue, 1st Street, and O Street to one-way operations in order to create a “traffic triangle” with a Wendy's in the middle.

Image from Flickr user tbridge

The Point

The punchline of this situation is that while most traffic circles in DC are named after locations, politicians, and generals, this one has been given a quite relevant and, in my opinion, humorous name. Because of the presence of a Wendy's on the island in the middle, people have started calling this one "Dave Thomas Circle" after the founder of Wendy's. I guess he counts as a famous American.

Now, the operations of the circle are pretty cool too. If you want to travel southbound on Florida avenue, you have to turn right on 1st then left on O to travel around the legs of the triangle. If you’re heading east on New York and you want to turn left onto Florida, you actually have to turn right onto O before you can turn left onto Florida and shoot across the hypotenuse.

Click for a bigger version. Please, I spent a lot of time on this.

It may seem unnecessarily complicated, but from an operations standpoint it lets the “circle” operate in only 3 phases:

1. Eastbound + Westbound New York
2. Northbound Florida + 1st
3. Southbound 1st + Eastbound O

instead of the 5 phases that all of the intersections were using before:

1. Eastbound New York + lefts
2. Eastbound + Westbound New York
3. Westbound New York + lefts
4. Southbound Florida + 1st
5. Northbound Florida + 1st

The cycle length is still 100 seconds, but the extra 8 seconds of lost time gained every cycle (3 yellow + 1 all red for both trimmed phases) adds up to a considerable bonus over the course of a day.

The funny thing is that this blog post – from the research to the pictures to the writing – is pretty much just a very disorganized version of the kinds of things I do at work every day. And that’s what makes me look forward to coming in to work in the morning. DC’s doing some pretty fascinating things with traffic operations… and that’s before I even consider some of the neat bicycle facilities or transit infrastructure that they’re working on. It’s simply a great time to be a transportation engineer in the nation’s capital.

Next time, in Part II of my series on DC Curiosities, we’ll learn about the District of Columbia’s official dinosaur just in time for CAPITALSAURUS DAY!


And yes, with the possible exception of me blowing off another deadline and missing Capitalsaurus Day, none of that previous sentence was made up.

UPDATE: My Spacious Studio Apartment Now Has 8 Rooms!

Those of you who were paying attention to the teaser at the end of the last posting may be wondering what ever happened to my planned update about election season in DC. Well, one of the things about having state and city government be one in the same is that they don’t need to have elections as frequently. So… it turns out that the next election cycle isn’t until 2012. Stick around for that one, I guess.

This blog prides itself in its accuracy. Well, that’s not entirely true – since large swaths of what I write about are made up, I suppose it’d be more accurate to say that this blog prides itself in its factualcy, or factual accuracy. And so in the spirit of factualcy, I must provide an addendum to my previous posting because in the last month, my spacious seven-room studio apartment has gained an eighth room.

8. Sprocket’s Room

Sprocket is a cat.

Caught wet-nosed again!

Sprocket came to live with my family in 2001, back when he was just a kitten.

Here he is with his sister Tsali. Look at those ears!

Because of recent events, Sprocket has come to live with me! Unfortunately, after 10 years of living in the same surroundings, the fact that he was essentially kidnapped, stuffed in a box, shaken around in a car for 2 hours, then dumped out into a small apartment while trash collection was going on in the alley behind my place didn’t sit well with him.

He spent the first two days or so hiding under my sofa. Unfortunately,
he's bigger than he thinks and so his butt still stuck out comically.

Eventually he adjusted to his new surroundings and started doing normal cat things…

...like eating...

...and licking his butt.

For some time now, Sprocket’s favorite place to stay has been an old Amazon box that I got when I ordered some CDs – Daft Punk’s Discovery and Rick Astley’s Whenever You Need Somebody, to be precise – and so naturally I brought it along as a part of the move.

The ideal cat box: short enough to see over and still slightly too small for the cat.

Sprocket has pretty much free reign over my apartment, but he still spends the majority of his time curled up in his “room.”

This, of course, exposes his fuzzy underbelly to much rubbing.

But it’s a pretty good place to sit, nestled in between my dining room and my office.

http://vimeo.com/32397612

Occasionally he will come out, but most of these times he still prefers lying down to actually being a productive member of society or contributing to rent or any of those things that would actually be helpful.

Here he is on his side, blocking my keyboard.

And here he is blocking pretty much all of my desk space.

He also likes to be up high, and luckily for him my bed fits that description. Unfortunately for me, he also likes to sit on comfy pillows while he’s up there, so I’ve had to bring my old king-sized pillow out of retirement from back in the day when he and his sister would both crowd me off of my normal pillow back during high school. Even with the garguntan pillow taking up the entire width of my mattress, he still practically crowds me out as you can see below.

This is how he wakes me up at 5am some days; reminding me that he
hasn't eaten in upwards of 4 hours.

Eventually he gives up and helps keep my face warm.

...although sometimes he picks an orientation that I don't really like.

Next time, we go on a tour of my local neighborhood and see all the lovely amenities like Dupont Circle, the National Museum of Jewish-American Military History, and Scientologists.

A Tour of My Spacious Seven-Room Studio Apartment

So I may be living in a 340 square foot box, but it’s actually pretty spacious for a single guy with low standards. In fact, if you’re willing to put a positive spin on it, I actually lucked out and found myself a seven-room studio apartment!

Now when I say that my apartment has six rooms, I’m not really even cheating and counting the bathroom or the kitchen. And although my bathroom is quite cramped, my kitchen is sized to be an eat-in kitchen, which makes it pretty spacious. I seriously considered putting my bed in the kitchen before I finally decided to buy a loft bed frame. But on a more practical note, what having a eat-in kitchen that you don’t eat in means is that you’re basically just short on counter space all the time. At least I’ve got a nice fridge and a generous freezer. And if you’ve ever lived with me, you know I can fill up a freezer.

This camera is sitting across the hallway from the bathroom, and this
is the widest shot I could get. It’s that cramped.

55 sq. ft. of floor space, 5.5 sq. ft. of counter space

So that brings us to the main portion of the apartment. It’s a studio, but it’s very well equipped for being built 103 years ago. Let’s begin the tour!

The Entry Hallway, or as I like to call it, The Chart Room
It seems like a big hallway would just be eating up my already scarce square footage, but it’s actually a pretty nice thing to have. It’s a pretty nice place to put up all of my wall art (which for me is mostly maps), but the thing I appreciate most about my hallway is that it gives me some good separation from the common hallway. The doors don’t seal particularly well – I can see my ceiling from the hallway through the gap above the door – and my hallway keeps my bed about 10-15’ from anything that’s happening out there. This is compared to my neighbor to the north (we’ll refer to him as “Canada”), who because of the layout of his apartment has to lay his head right next to his front door.

Fun Fact: I am required by my lease to keep at least
80% of my hardwood floors covered by carpets. 

The Dressing Nook
At the end of my hallway is a weird nook where the hallway suddenly doubles in width. I can only imagine what it looks like in Mexico’s apartment (in keeping with the neighbor analogy). Anyway, it’s as good of a place as any to keep my dresser. Opposite the nook is my surprisingly large closet, which is even more impressive to me considering just how little closet space I got by with during college since all my closets wound up being full of pipes. There’s even enough space in my closet to store my spare dining room table chairs, and they double as a nice place to put my shoes on in the morning.

Coat Rack, Mirror, Ticket Stubs, Hallway, Map, BELLY BUTTON!

The Dining Room
One of the many pieces of furniture that I picked up from family members was my grandmother’s very nice solid wood dining room table. It didn’t sell on Craigslist, so she decided to give it to me as payment for listing all of her furniture items on Craigslist. That’s the Circle of Used Furniture, right there. Anyway, my dining room’s got a table and a TV, and that’s really all I need. Plus, the table is pretty big and it even has a leaf that I can add, so if any five of you want to come visit I do have the capability to host you all simultaneously. It just might be hard for us all to watch TV.

Although this photo is staged, I do routinely eat applesauce
straight from the jar. What are you going to do about it?

The Office
I also have a very nice desk in my apartment. Solid wood and everything! And… a tablecloth. Okay, you figured me out – it’s just the dining room table. But the thing’s big enough that it all works out. All of the computer stuff clears off of the desk and can be stored on the adjacent table along with the external monitor and my printer in seconds flat for hosting purposes. (hint, hint) I also get to stare up at my Wall O’ Memorabilia when I get tired of watching prairie dogs ride around on a Roomba.

Tory was nice enough to let me win at Fantasy Football this week, by the way.

The Living Room
Home to my fold-out queen-size sleeper sofa, yet another failed Craigslist sale item. Although I can testify that the top is good for sleeping too, if a bit short. The poster is something my college dorm's RA's earned in a trivia contest (so naturally I'm the one who has it now), and the rug is where I do Wii Fit to keep from getting Way Fat.

Seriously, my morning routine has gotten to be this: wake up, bathroom,
check email, nap for 15-20 minutes on the couch, Wii Fit, shower, work.

The Den
In addition to the couch, I have 9 chairs in my apartment including this recliner, a hand-me-down from Richmond Brad. In conjunction with my surround sound speakers, having a comfy chair really makes my old dorm TV seem like a lot more of a cinematic experience. Well, that and sitting 5’ from the screen helps to make the thing seem a lot bigger. Add an air conditioner, a FDR blanket, and a space heater and you’re good through all seasons.

You can really see the disappointment on Tom Brady’s face after
throwing a red-zone INT at home for the first time ever from 5’ away.

The Bedroom
My bedroom back in Richmond isn’t much smaller than the main room here at my apartment. I’ve really only got 12’3” by 12’9” of contiguous space, and honestly when I first tried to come up with a good furniture layout I was afraid that it’d really feel like I was living in a bedroom. But I’ve put the bedroom last on this list because it really is the last place I feel like I am when I get home from work. Office, living room, dining room, all of those seem obvious – but by putting my bed 7’ up in the air I really do forget about it until it comes to be time to go to bed. And while at its most basic your home really is just where you lay your head at night, you really don’t need much in the way of furnishings to make a bedroom comfortable. It’s not like you’re going to be conscious long enough to appreciate it that much. A clock, a fan, a pillow, and that’s really about it.

10’ ceilings are AWESOME. So is having 3 nice, large
windows... Except when you're trying to sleep in.

Well, that about does it for our tour of my spacious, well-equipped studio apartment. I certainly find it functional, especially for my purposes as (1) a guy (2) living alone (3) who likes to watch TV and classic movies. Heck, with those qualifications I could live in 60 square feet and get by pretty well. Just throw in free meals and free cable and... well, I guess that would make my optimal living space be "prison."

Tune in next time when I'll give you a preview of election season in DC. You'll be surprised to hear some of the weird things they have us vote on, and also to find out why people who go to Purdue University have more of a say over the DC budget than I do.

Moving In II: Electric Boogaloo

When we last left the action, Peter was living in a sparsely furnished apartment.

Now, I was certainly making due with my card table and inflatable cot… but since I’m really enjoying this town and the work that I’m doing here, I’ve got a good feeling about sticking around a while. Certainly for the duration of my two-year lease, to say the least. So it was high time for me to get myself some actual furniture.

My family has changed around housing enough lately that there was a sizeable surplus of quality furnishings for me to choose from. In fact, even after I had enough stuff at my disposal to furnish the place twice over, I still had family members coming to me with offers of dressers and beds and desks and all manner of things that I imagine they were perplexed to have me turn down. Yes, I’m sure all of your items are wonderful and all, but seriously: I’m set!

So finally, a few weeks after my original move-in, I was able to rope my mom and Brad into helping me do The Big Move. We decided to rent a small truck on the off-chance that it would rain on the designated Sunday, but unfortunately I waited too long to settle on a date and time and so U-Haul (with their fantastically cheap 2-day rental with included mileage rate) were booked solid. Seriously – every location between Richmond and DC was out of 10’ trucks. Fortunately, my company was offering to reimburse me for moving expenses, and I figured I’d gained enough goodwill with them by not making them pay for a hotel while I was waiting for my apartment to be ready to splurge a bit.

And so we wound up getting a 12’ Penske truck from the local Home Depot. Unfortunately, they’d been provided with at 10’ van by the regional office… but luckily for us, the desk agent was able to hook us up with an unused 16’ truck. That thing was massive, but really fun to drive around the neighborhood collecting furniture from my grandmother and the storage unit.

Check out how color-coordinated we are.
Even the truck decided to wear yellow!

We got the truck fully loaded in the evening, and the next morning we headed up and navigated the big truck through town to my building. It took a few jumped curbs and some momentarily-threatened flowerbeds, but we eventually got the thing pulled up into the turnaround in front of the President Madison Apartments.

On the way, the truck made a friend! I only wish a Penske
truck had shown up too so we could've had a drag race.

Unloading went fairly smoothly, but when it came time to park the truck and actually do some furniture arranging… well, then came the tricky part. In case you ever come to visit, know this: parking in my neighborhood is tricky. If you let me know beforehand, I can move my car to an on-street parking space while all the businesspersons are at work on Friday during my lunch break and you can use my space, but that simply wasn’t going to work for a 16’ rental truck. We eventually wound up finding a large enough parallel parking space about a mile away in the business district near my work before heading back to arrange some of the larger furniture pieces.

Eventually we got tired of that and went on a brief tour of the neighborhood, including a lunch stop, before heading over to a street near my work to pick up the truck. My indentured crew dropped me off at my place to let me sort through all my boxes before making a beeline back to Richmond to beat traffic. I don’t blame them – you really never know what traffic leaving DC is going to be like, so it’s best to leave town as quickly as possible.

So I was left to sort through all my newly-arrived stuff. Fortunately, I was able to cram enough furniture into the studio to have enough space to store everything, but you’ll have to wait for the next post before you see just how the arrangement worked out. For now, you’ll have to make due with some stuff about MY NEW BED!

No, not this. Real bed or bust!

The cot had been serving me well and all, but it was a bit to short and a bit too squeaky, so I was really looking forward to getting a legitimate mattress – something like the Twin XL I’d had in college. I’d toyed around with the thought of getting a bigger one, but with the arrival of my new sleeper sofa there simply wasn’t going to be enough room for anything bigger. Plus, I don’t roll around THAT much. In any case, a shopping trip was in order, but that’s not really the point of the story.

The truth is, with all the stuff I’d already crammed into the the apartment I wasn’t really going to have enough room for any bed without some creative rearrangement. I could get a Murphy Bed, but then you have to tuck in your sheets and hide your pillows every morning, and who does that?

So I once again returned to the college mindset and decided to buy myself a loft bed.  It only took a bit of online shopping and a $95 shipping bill, but the pre-cut, pre-drilled pieces arrived and I was able to put the thing together in 3 hours. Well, 3 hours once I finally got a cordless drill to take care of the 100+ wood screws.  And it’s a good thing it only took 3 hours, because I only started putting the thing together at 11pm on a Sunday night so that I’d have it ready in time for a friend from college to stay on my couch on Monday. If I hadn’t gotten it done... well, I would have had to sleep on the floor.

Easy assembly! Only 41 pieces plus fasteners!

The point of the story? Come visit! I have space now!

Tune in next time for a tour of my luxurious, six-room studio apartment. Or, at least that’s how I choose to think of it.

Living in DC: Moving In

Since it’s been over two months since I started my new job, it’s probably not really a surprise to you that I’m pretty much completely moved in and situated in my new apartment. But I figured that before I gave you a tour of the new place, I might as well tell you a bit about how I got here.

By the time I finally decided to accept the job, there were only two weeks left before the company wanted me to start working. One of those weeks was already booked up between family commitments and participating in Colin and Anna’s wedding in Richmond, so things were pretty tight as far as the apartment hunt was concerned. (By the way, I made a post about that - Hunting High and Low). But I eventually found a place on the Tuesday before I was set to start, and I was pleased to find out that their lease periods started on Wednesdays. Unfortunately… because the place I’d agreed to rent still needed to be treated for bugs, repainted, and have the floors refinished… I wasn’t going to be able to move in until the following Wednesday… two days after my start date.

So once again, my friend Mitch was nice enough to let me stay at his place. I mean, the company had offered to put me up in a hotel, but Mitch had already offered and I knew I’d appreciate having somebody to hang out with as I was trying to get back into the swing of being a working man. Plus, the cheapest reasonable hotel was $300/night and I figured if I could save the company $1000 that would look pretty good come performance review time.

Mitch’s building has a rooftop pool, for those moments where you really urgently have to cool off.

So Mitch and I had a good time those nights, even though I had to get up extra early in the morning so I could make sure I had enough time to deal with any potential Orange Line delays. This all culminated on Wednesday, when I got the foolish idea to move in before work started. Now, this idea actually started with some sense – the most direct way from Mitch’s place to mine is on I-66, and pretty much all of that road is designated HOV-2 during rush hour. Therefore, if I wanted to move in after work I’d either have to do a round trip to Mitch’s and back after 7pm or I’d have to find a place to park downtown, which in addition to being very expensive also didn’t make me very comfortable considering that I had all of my stuff stored in my car. SO I decided that the way I’d prefer was to get up at 5:15, drive there in 25 minutes (it’s easy when nobody’s awake!) and try to do all my moving between 6am and 8am. And so I did.

One car-load really doesn't take up much space.

Now, even though my studio apartment is pretty small, I wasn’t able to move in anywhere close to everything in my car. But I tried to take enough stuff that I’d be able to get by until I could rent a truck and con some of my family into helping me lug heavy furniture around. This led to some interesting compromises, very few of which do I have pictures of.

It’s not set up in this picture, but for the first few weeks of my new digs I was staying on my old cot with inflatable air mattress that I got in 2005 for use at the Boy Scout Jamboree. It’s still plenty comfortable, although it’s a bit squeaky and just barely long enough for me.

My all-purpose horizontal surface is temporarily a card table. Since I don’t have my docking station or external monitor, that’s just as well for now. Although I kind of wish I had a table cloth since the surface of the table is very stick-to-able. But in order to keep the desk/dining functions separate, I do have not one but two folding chairs! Oh, the luxury.

I did bring my TV from college along with me in the first trip. And hey, because my new cable company is surprisingly awesome I had a technician in my apartment hooking up my cable and internet service within 20 minutes of getting home from work on the day I moved in. I even brought a TV cart along with me, which by virtue of the fact that it’s on wheels it makes it very easy for me to point the TV at whatever seating area I happen to be using. Since the room is pretty shallow, this means there’s a 90+ degree range from my dinner table over to my recliner, so it’s nice to actually be able to point the screen at your chair.

So things were set up pretty well back then. Although in the kitchen, I must admit that there was (and still is) a bit of a shortage of counter space, so I had to make some impromptu box furniture. For instance, when I got tired of bending over to use my microwave, I put it up on a stack of boxes. Granted, the stack of three boxes was eventually crushed under the weight of many a bowl of frozen veggies, so I don’t really recommend using boxes for legitimately heavy things.

However, I can whole-heartedly endorse the Oversized Cereal Box Trash Can.

Stay tuned for more about how I actually got the apartment set up with legitimate furniture and a real bed. Hint: even with hand-me-down furniture, it’s still surprisingly expensive.

Peter’s Peripatetic Pages: Blog, Phase II

I’m about two months into my first job, and things are going well. I’m liking what I’m doing, the people seem really great, and I’m really settling into the neighborhood quite well. Unfortunately, this means that I’m going to be a bit more tied down than the purpose of this blog really allows. I still hope to get out and go on crazy expeditions from time to time, but the fact is that I’m just not going to be churning out the massive expedition reports like I have in the past year.

However, that doesn’t mean this blog is going away. No, sir. Already, there are plenty of things I’ve found during my travels throughout the district that I want to share, including facts about the history of DC and some pretty crazy goings on that have happened since I’ve been there. I’ll also be talking a bit about my new arrangements, living off on my own in a tiny studio apartment. As someone who has lived in suburbia their entire life, I keep finding aspects of the urban lifestyle that are foreign to me yet at the same time completely fascinating.

Now that things are finally starting to settle down, I can finally start to kick back and relax in the evenings. In fact, that’s pretty much been my main goal for the last 15 years: get back to the point where I don’t have homework. Since I was 8, there’s always been stuff to do after I get home, and I can’t wait for the day where when I’m done for the day, I’m actually done. Sure, I know that some day I’ll probably have enough responsibility that I’ll have to respond to emails and take calls during all hours... but I figure by the time I get to that point I’ll be making a good deal more money.

So anyway, in addition to being able to start going to bed before 1am - I still haven’t broken myself of that habit - I think it’s about time for me to start blogging recreationally  again. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are too! I think I’ve got some cool stuff lined up to share.

Living in DC: Hunting High and Low

And now for a new series. I've recently accepted a job working for a transportation engineering consultant in Washington DC, and so we'll probably have a few posts about the move up there and my getting situated in The Big City. This post is mostly copied from Facebook, since I was going to just make an album there but I got more than a little carried away with telling the story. Here goes.


In the last month, I've had three different hunts Take On Me: the job hunt, the apartment hunt, and the Post Hunt. While I'm pleased to say that the first two are over, they were all fairly interesting experiences, especially the A-Ha moments in the Post Hunt. That thing was fantastic. This album covers all of my experiences Hunting High and Low in May-June of 2011.


I expect to put in some more updates once I've moved all of my stuff into the apartment. Depending on where I put everything, I guess we'll just have to see if The Sun Always Shines on TV.


The Post Hunt


The first and most fun hunt of the month was the Post Hunt. It's an afternoon of crazy puzzles requiring cleverness and wordplay and often Batman-like leaps of logic. However, if you are able to solve even one of the puzzles, the feeling is fantastic. As one of my friends said, "Figuring out a [Post Hunt] puzzle is one of the most gratifying things I've ever done. Ever."

I've been a follower of Dave Barry's blog for several years now, so every year I'd see him do a writeup of the Miami Herald Hunt and the fantastic puzzles it contained. In 2008, he and some of his colleagues at the Washington Post started a sister event up in our neck of the woods.

The week before the event, I saw him plugging the Post Hunt on his blog and I said to myself, "man, self, I really wish I were working in DC already so I could participate in the hunt." Then I thought back, "hey, I need to go find an apartment up in DC anyway in the next week... why not go up there a day early and do the Hunt?"



So I did. And IT WAS GREAT.

Solving each puzzle can be quite difficult. The organizers announce several coordinates containing the puzzles which correspond to locations on the map provided in the Sunday newspaper. When you arrive at the location, you're given little to no instruction on how to solve the puzzle, except that "the answer is a number." For instance, here's the only puzzle I took a picture of.

You show up in front of the Old Post Office Building and find this display. If you read the Washington Post Magazine (which you're supposed to before you show up) you might recognize this as a display on one of the pages. Should you add up the prices of the items? Should you count the leaves on the flowers and divide by the number of drawers? Should you ignore the table and figure out how old Ben Franklin (in the background) was when he died?

No. In this particular puzzle, you're supposed to realize that the only difference between this display and the one in the magazine is that this one is missing a mirror in the vanity. If you physically cut out the mirror in the magazine, it reveals a picture of a record on the following page, and specifically the words "45 RPM". The answer is 45.

If you want to know more about the diabolical cleverness in each Hunt puzzle, check out their website (http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/post-hunt-2011) for videos about each of the puzzles.

Anyway, there are five main puzzles. You need the solutions to these puzzles to enter the End Game - an even more devious puzzle - to determine the winner. In this case, a Beatles cover band sang snippets of songs, and you were supposed to use your five numbers from the early puzzles to figure out which one to pay attention to.

For those of us who didn't figure it out... well, the band played for us while we waited for a team to win so we could have all the solutions explained slowly to the rest of us.

All in all, the Hunt was a blast, the weather was great, and I'm really looking forward to next year's installment. We'll be ready, Pullitzer Prize-winning columnists and Tom!

The Apartment Hunt


On Monday, I had to buckle down and get to work before I could actually get to work. You see, I got a job offer from a company (Gorove/Slade Associates, a transportation engineering firm up in DC), which is great and all except that they wanted me to start in only a few weeks. Because of a wedding and some other committments, I only left myself with a week to find an apartment. And so with a few hours of frantically crammed-in research on Sunday night, I set off to visit places on Monday morning.

The first place I visited was the largest (1BR), the cheapest ($1085/mo), and the only one to offer garage parking at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, it's in kind of a sketchy neighborhood. Property crime stats are about the same there, but violent crime happens at about 4-5x the rate as in the other areas I was looking at. In fact, people at work said they wouldn't feel comfortable living there... so I took it out of the running after visiting. Too bad, the building was brand new.

From there, I walked south towards my second appointment, passing through a fantastic park with this mesmerizing fountain.

Oh, and a suave duck.

The second building was located near this Harris Teeter. Julia and her family live near one in North Carolina, so I was intrigued by the possibility of living down the block from a nice grocery store. That park from before was across the street as well.

It's located in an old rollerdome, hence the funky roof and styling.

Unfortunately, the only sizeable studio apartment they had open was located on the ground floor right outside the trash room, so I was a bit put off. Plus, that building has had a number of bedbug reports, and when I asked the rental agent about insect treatments in the building it really seemed like she was trying to hide something, so I passed on it.


The third place was a bit of a mystery to me. It was very large for a studio but they were asking quite a steep price for it ($1492/mo). Turns out that was because: 1) the building was very close to Metro (just look at the picture - it's about 600' from door to door), 2) surface parking was included, and 3) utilities were NOT included.

However, after visiting the place (really nice appliances including in-unit washer/dryer) and walking around the neighborhood I realized that parking was free because you NEED a car to get anywhere apart from Metro. It's well over a mile to the nearest store or restaurant.

 I'd been worried that a place so close to an above ground Metro station would be noisy. I mean, it's the same rail corridor that serves Amtrak trains running out of Union Station. However, I hung around inside the building for a while as several trains ran by and I couldn't hear a thing.

However, as you probably noticed in the previous picture, the 600' from Metro to my door would have been taken up by a sizeable bus station, and as I quickly noticed there was a bus that turned left RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY WINDOW about every 2 minutes. Seriously, those things went within 15 or 20' of my living room, and they made quite a racket.

And so by that point it was 5pm on Monday and it was time to call it a day and head back across town and into Virginia to meet up with Mitch once more. All I'd eaten that day was a single pear, so as soon as I got back I ate the remainder of the food I'd brought to his apartment, which meant putting away a pound of strawberries in about two minutes. They were delicious.

Tuesday morning, due to bad planning, I had to pack up and leave Mitch's within about 10 minutes of waking up so he could get to work on time and I could still have access to my car that afternoon.


So around 8am I found myself sitting getting off the Metro at Farragut Square - the closest station complex to my new workplace - with only one appointment for the day. I had a bit of time to make some phone calls to try to schedule some more appointments, but mostly I read an actual PRINT COPY of The Onion and watched the squirrels run around.

It's probably just because they want your food, but between how playful they seem and just how close they're willing to get to people they really remind me of the Virginia Tech Squirrels. I can already tell that we're going to get along.

As I looked northward through the urban canyon that is Connecticut Avenue, I thought about just how much I wanted this next place to work out.

All throughout Monday, it seemed like the next place I was going to visit was the most fantastic place I could possibly live. I blew everything out of proportion so much that any one critical flaw was enough to completely ruin the place in my opinion. So I had high hopes for the next place.

I walked north from Farragut Square and in two blocks got to 1140 Connecticut Avenue NW, the building where I'll be working. If you're in the area, you can remember it because it's the one that says "IMPROV" on the front, which is appropriate because for the past six months I've pretty much been making it up as I go along.

 

Eventually, I reached my destination: the President Madison Apartments at the corner of Florida Ave and 20th St NW. It's easy to find because it's the only place in the area done in the Mission Revival architectural style.

Along the way, I'd had the opportunity to pass through Dupont Circle and very close to Adams Morgan... and I must confess that I really fell in love with the area along the way. It's just so walkable, and there are all kinds of cool restaurants and shops nearby to check out over the next year. Plus, once you're off Connecticut Ave the place just seemed so much calmer and safer than anywhere else I'd been in the city on my apartment hunt.

Now more than ever I wanted the place to work out.


...


And you know what, that's probably why I wound up applying for the place they offered me. It didn't matter that it was the second most expensive ($1315/mo), had the highest parking fee ($180/mo for a surface lot behind the building), and was BY FAR the smallest (340 sq ft)... I was sold before I even walked in the door.

You can see just how small the place is in this 270-degree panorama (click to zoom in). In fact, the main room is only 12'3" by 12'9" because so much of the square footage is tied up in the full kitchen and the entrance hallway.

Now, lest you think I'm a crazy person for actually wanting to return to dorm room conditions, let me start by saying that it's only a 14-minute walk to work from inside my living room, and let me continue by showing you some of the amenities of the building. 

As you go down into the basement, watch out for low pipes. All the ones highlighted in red here are low enough for me to hit my head on. Fortunately, I'll only need to go past this room when I need to access...

  ...the indoor bike storage room! Sure, the place is right across the street from a Capital Bikeshare station, but I'll probably bring two bikes with me anyway, one for recreational rides and my older bike for commuting.

One of these days I'll make a map of the region of DC where it's quicker to ride a bicycle than to take transit... but let me just say that you have to go about 8 metro stops in any direction - without transfers - to get out of that zone.


They've also got this exercise room, for when it's too hot to jog.


And I should mention that the fitness room has nicer TVs than I do, so I might just make it a habit of going down there to watch shows anyway.

From the high-ceilinged section of the basement, you can access this cool courtyard. It has some nice shady trees, a few benches, and one (soon to be two) awesome gas grills.

Click to enlarge

Around back of the building is the parking area. It's a surface lot, but I'm not too concerned about the safety of my car since the lot is surrounded by buildings on all sides, including a few apartment complexes, an embassy, and some row houses. That last category includes L. Ron Hubbard's house where he lived when he came up with the idea for Scientology. Since I'm on the same block, I figure that means I'm going to have to go see that museum.

If we go around the corner parking lot, in closer to the building...

 ...we can see my apartment around the corner from the lower section of the parking lot. Yes, it is a first floor apartment, but because of the gradual slope of this part of the Dupont Circle neighborhood I'm a healthy distance off the ground.

However, the coolest thing about my apartment is that the only surface I share in common with an adjoining apartment is the ceiling. That should really cut down on noisy neighbors. On two sides, I have walls to the outside. On our left in this view you'd have to go through my kitchen and their kitchen to get to the next apartment, and to get to the apartment to our right you'd have to go through two closets in the same way. Plus, I'm above a mechanical room so I might even be able to get away with Rock Band drumming at all hours of the day if the mood strikes me.

 So yeah, I'm pretty excited about the whole situation. I applied Tuesday, was approved Wednesday, signed up for renter's insurance on Friday, and I'm signing papers this coming Tuesday for move-in on Wednesday. Just check out this tentative floorplan for the new place. Looks like I might be using a bunk bed once more, in case the similarities to my dorm room weren't apparent already.

Yes, I do start work on Monday, but one of my friends was nice enough to let me stay with him for a few days until I can actually move in. It'll be sad to finally move away from home for real (even worse because I never actually got around to clearing out all of my childhood stuff), but I'm only 2 hours from home and there really is a lot to look forward to about my new neighborhood.

Feel free to drop me a line or to come visit sometime if you're in town. Parking will be difficult, though, but if you come by on the weekends you can park for free at a Metro station and ride in the rest of the way to save some money.

My new address will be:
1908 Florida Avenue NW #119
Washington, DC 20009

Don't be a stranger!