Day 7 - 11:30 PM
Silver Spring, MD


So beat bus was early today, but of course it took an hour to load the bus, so despite being there at 8:55, we only left at around 10:00. We kept going for a while, stopping for gas, etc, until we hit a mall where we stopped for about and hour and a half. At first, a group and I were just walking around, and then we found a Lego store, so we had to stop. We looked around for a bit, but ended up making some minifigures of some guys in club for about 15 minutes.

Then we headed to lunch with DR and Stephen, the assistant conductor, at California Pizza Kitchen, which is a great restaurant, by the way. But then we headed back to the bus. Nap time, 2.0.

We stop at the Air and Space Museum, and I volunteered to be part of the luggage crew, which was only DR, Stephen, my friend Chase and I. We had to rearrange all of the luggage because we were dropped off at three different locations today for host stays, a relative logistical nightmare. After a while I got to go in for about half an hour, and let me tell you, it was cool. Got to see the Discovery shuttle, which was so crazy awesome. There was a computer built at the same time - a mobile computer - which weighed more than a few tons, and had the mind blowing capacity of 2kb.

After that is where the real fun begins. There's an uneventful drive back with less clubbers - the hosts picked many up outside of the museum - until we park to drop some people off in DC. We pull inbetween two buildings and are unloading the bus for a while until the police come and tell us we have to move, which requires backing a coach bus into 5 lanes of traffic. We somehow maneuver it after 10 minutes back into the road, and we're on our way once again.

Not for long. We make one turn, and have to back up on a busy road during rush hour because the clearing was too low for the bus. Two clubbers run out and stand in traffic so we are able to actually turn the bus around, and then we get back on the road. The rest of the drive has about 7 K-turns, U-turns, ohcrapineedtomakealeftnotgostraight-turns, and even more. We somehow end up getting to the Metro station in Bathesda, Maryland finally, where we meet our host parents.

Our host mom takes my friend Jon and I out for Thai food, and I just had some good pad thai which felt really great, and then we headed back to the house where we've just been relaxing and I've been blogging for the last 45 minutes or so. At this point, I'm definitely beat and need to get some rest before the next concert. After this, we're past the halfway point, and headed towards Philly - aka tour prank concert.