Okay, I got another story here, but this is way more wacked out because probably none of you have been to DC on fireworks day. xD
Anyways, so, since thursday I've been pulling 10 to 7 working days by volunteering at the Folklife festival, it's a lot of fun and I'm totally dead by the end of the day and can't stand up, wish I was getting paid, I do it every year, yatta yatta I can tell that story later.
This story is about what happened after everything was over. :3
See, we've been getting a lot of rainstorms lately right? And since the Folklife fest is on the mall (The big grassy thing in DC, not a actual MALL. xD) and therefore outside, it pretty much has to close down if we get any serious rain. Well, yesterday we had a bad enough storm to close stuff down a little early, but today totally took the cake.
It all started out by everything closing at 4:30 because there was a HUGE storm moving in, and we had to put everything inside the trailors or else it'd all DIE and all that stuff. xD General emergency stuff that happens every time we get a storm. I was pretty much looking forwards to it because DC in the summer gets into the hundreds WITH humidity, and I'd been on my feet all day, so it was looking good.
Aaanyways, we headed over to one of the museums to sit on the steps and hang out and watch the storm, getting a drink in the process (My dad took some pictures
here and
here. That's my dad's pack and I was sorta glaring at him. > 3>) And thus it started raining!
It took a while (Hence all the people on the steps), but when the rain got going it was pretty hard and people started going inside the museum.
THIS is when it started going all weird. > 3>
The security people started herding EVERYONE inside the museum, even the people that wanted to stay inside, even rushing people. They were shouting stuff like it was for our safety and making everyone hurry and all that stuff. WAY much more then for a normal storm eh? They even wouldn't let us eat and drink despite the fact they had LOCKED US IN. Yes, they actually locked the doors.
Now, it looked pretty bad outside, but I did see a few people walking by, and it wasn't like if you went outside you'd get blown over or would die, though you might get hit by a branch or something, so me and my dad were extraordinarily baffled. Afterwords my dad said that he almost told them that he had the right to go outside, and was pondering kicking down the door. o_o
So, now they had locked up the front doors, and everyone was sitting in the lobby of the museum (I would have taken a picture by they wouldn't even let us take out cameras or cell phones), and the storm was almost over. There was barely any thunder and the rain wasn't blowing sideways anymore. They STILL had us locked in, and were in fact making us go down into the auditorium underneith the building, again "For our own safety". They even told my dad to stop drinking his tea when it was already poured out of the thermos. >_>
Me and my dad figured we had to get out of there, and were waiting near the front door, not about to move until they MADE us move. A few minutes later, a cop car drove onto the front of the museum and let out 3 or 4 people, who the guards unlocked the door so they could come in (Why am I mentioning this? Because they had been picked up OFF THE MALL. As in, told firmly to get in.) So as the people came in, me and my dad just pushed through the door and went outside (ESCAPE!~), laughing and tutting at the security guards for being so weird. We were stuck in there for almost 20 minutes.
BUT THIS WASN'T THE LAST OF IT!
A big crack of thunder nearly made us jump, and we went to a smaller glass museum thing to stand inside to wait for the thunder to pass. Well, we stepped inside the glass doors, and yet another security guard told us to come all the way inside. We got out of there as quick as we could, we didn't want to be stuck inside again after just excaping!
Luckily they didn't yell at us to stay inside for our own safety again, and we were all clear.
It was all very strange, as my dad worked at the senate offices and that had never happened to him before, and two years before we had a storm that was just as bad and nothing had happened like that, so we discussed why they all did that (My dad thought it was either 'coz of overreacting or because there was a planned evacuation later on and they were all tense about it. Later he thought maybe they had desided to do it right then.), and eventually my curiousity got the better of me. We stopped walking to the car and headed up to the Hirshhorn building (Which if you haven't seen it is a big doughnut thing that sits off the ground on one side so you can sit under it,
like this.) because there were a lot of people that looked like they hadn't been trapped inside by crazy security guards. We talked to some people about it, and finally asked one of the guards there if they had done what the people at the other museum had done. In fact almost directly out of the guy's mouth, "They wouldn't have tried something like that." Apparently they'd just advised people to stay in, but let them out if they wanted to go out.
Radically different from the museum we were at, huh?
Yeah, me and my dad were pretty confused about it too, so we just continued walking back to his car, puzzled and still discussing over why the security guards were so insistant about people staying inside.
I said it wasn't over, didn't I?
Me and my dad continued to walk for about 10 minutes, when suddenly we saw yet another security guard, this time shouting at people crossing the street to get inside the Air and Space museum. We began talking about this, because at the time it was barely raining, and the sun had begun to come out, so why they would be pushing people into the museum was beyond us. We kept walking, ignoring the guards, and were hidden behind a few plants, until finally they noticed two people were getting away.
Not only did we get ONE following after us, ANOTHER started coming when the other was getting too far away from their post, and they were shouting for the one on the street to chase us!
I was scared as hell that they were gonna come and tackle or arrest us or something, but my dad just kept walking as they were yelling, occationally shouting back no, or that he wasn't going back in. Eventually we got far enough away that they gave up on us and started chasing after other people. xD
When we were out of sight range, we sat down on some stone border thing and laughed about how they were making all these people go inside the museum when the Hare Krishnas were still out on the Mall doing stuff, and people were in crowds just a block away. (And I took
this picture attempting to get a picture of the McDonald's minivan thing! Yeah. That's my dad.)
Anyways, on the way back we kept seeing all these extensive security measures and stuff for the forth of july celebration, but otherwise, we didn't get stopped or anything. xD
(More pictures because I started randomly snapping them on the long way back to the car!
One of the blocked off streeets~ (See how cloudy it was?)Another street of blockedness! (Signifigantly less cloudy!)Them setting up for the forth of july thing. xDAnd the cannon for the 5th overture (I think? o_o)This was on the BLOCKED OFF street just before you get to the capital. xDAnd a sign that everyone was cleverly surpassing. xDDAnd I just thought this was kinda neat. o_o)
Well, just another crazy day in DC. |D
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