Summer and I got up for breakfast this morning, which was pretty much the bare minimum for “hot” hotel breakfast. Then I showered while the girls went downstairs to find some food for themselves. We loaded up, and Summer took the first half of the drive. The girls slept some more, and even I started to doze off quite a bit. We stopped to charge one last time in Strasburg and shared a couple Junior Whoppers next door.
I took the final leg of the trip and had to sit through a bunch of stop-and-go traffic to get into Washington. We made it to the University of Maryland without incident, so I guess the trip has been a success so far. I dropped the girls off at the Student Union building to register while I parked. Luckily there were a couple chargers just across the street, so I parked there and went inside to find them.
Once they were registered, the girls were ready to go back to their dorm. They walked while Summer and I drove their luggage over. We ran into their other partner and her grandmother on the way, so after they registered, we went back to get them back to the dorm as well.
We ended up sticking around in the dorm longer than I wanted. Summer stumbled through the Metro Pass process and probably ended up spending about four times as much money as she needed to before I looked at any of it. I finally talked her into leaving the girls alone to decompress, and we headed across town to find our own hotel.
There was a mob of angry patrons in the lobby, and the staff were clearly frustrated, but handling the situation with absolute grace. When it was finally our turn, I told our girl that she was doing a great job, and Summer ended up going around the counter to give her a hug. We got checked in super quickly and then went around the building to find our room. We took everything up, but then found an ozone generator in our room, with the door ajar. I decided I really didn’t want to leave our stuff there, so we took it all back down to the car and went around the block to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner.
The restaurant was actually pretty busy, and the food was good. They still didn’t give me any celery or carrots, which I never understood. After we ate, we went back to the hotel and found a couple EV chargers. One was broken, and the other was in use. We made our way back up to the room instead, and unloaded before heading back to the university for the opening ceremony.
Traffic by then was horrible on campus. There were so many people, and the volunteers that were directing traffic seemed to be a little slow in that special kind of way. We made it back up the parking garage to charge though, and then walked down to the McKeldin Mall for the ceremony. Nobody was more disappointed by the use of the word “mall” than me. The “ceremony” was a relatively long and boring “thank you to all of these highly important people,” followed by a roll call of all 50 states and some international participants. They ended the ceremony with a parody of a One Direction song I had found the lyrics to earlier in the day.
Summer and I left for the evening and headed back to the hotel. We got settled in, but then the TV wouldn’t work and we had to call the front desk. They sent an “engineer” up to inspect, and he brought a little non-contact voltage tester that beeped at every outlet. In the end, still nothing worked, so he walked the mini fridge to the other side of the room to a working outlet. In his rummaging, we moved the TV and found a couple empty drug baggies under the stand. Several things about our room felt extremely sketchy, but at least our check-in clerk was nice.
I never thought I’d complain about being too cold in a hotel room.