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!