It’s been an excellent weekend for skating, and DC’s a great town for it. I was out on my wheels for four hours yesterday and four more hours today, and my legs sure are tired. Yesterday I went down New Hampshire to Dupont Circle, down Massachusets Ave. to 16th Street, stopped at the White House to watch some roller hockey players at President’s Roadblock, then circled around down the Mall to the Smithsonian Museums.

I switched to sandals at the National Gallery of Art and checked in my backpack and skates to wander about the galleries and look at paintings. Beautiful collection! I got to see works such as Copley’s Watson and the Shark, Rembrandt’s Apostle Paul, Da Vinci’s portrait of Ginevra de’Benci, and an especially intriguing series of four narrative paintings by Thomas Cole: The Voyage of Life.

From there, I skated up to the Washington Monument, then around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial, where I stopped to take photos of the view from the Memorial to the White House. From there, I struggled down the rough gravel paths along the opposite end of the Tidal Basin to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, a pleasant affair of fountains and carvings decorated with quotes by FDR.

Today was a Mall-and-Reflecting-Pool Day. After hanging out again at the Washington Monument and lounging a bit on the grassy hill to watch kitefliers, I went around the Reflecting Pool a few times, then took off my skates to view the following Memorials, in order: Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Lincoln Memorial. Then, I rolled back down the Reflecting Pool and back up to the Monument to watch the sunset. As it grew dark, it was a long, grueling uphill skate back around the White House and up Meridian Hill to get back home.

Whew! Some additional skating notes for beginning and aspiring DC skaters tomorrow. (And Aaron might also have some advice.) I’m exhausted.