hey, I told you two to stop bouncing around...

Well, now wasn't that a jam packed full of excitement trip!  Yes, we were right there -- smack dab in the middle of Washington D.C. when the earthquake hit.  Sorry about misleading you with the photo -- I thought you might get a laugh out of that.  We weren't at the Washington monument.  We were in the car and driving up the ramp of an underground parking garage (where the car had been parked on the lowest level).  Rick had just paid and pulled through the toll gate -- but he had to wait to get on the street because people were walking on the sidewalk in front of the car.  The back half of the car was still inside the building.  The front half of the car was outside of the building. The ramp we were sitting on was on a steep incline (about 25 - 30 degrees).  All of a sudden the back of the car started bouncing up and down -- so Rick, impatient from having to wait for the people passing in front of the car, yelled at Sofia (who never stops bouncing...) and Nicholas.  He grumbled "I told you two to stop bouncing around".  As, I turned to look at him I noticed a man standing next to the car on the sidewalk.  The man first looked down to the ground and seemed to be trying to steady himself -- and then he looked up towards the sky.  Falsely accused, neither Nicholas, or, Sofia was bouncing -- but there was a car making it's way up the parking garage ramp behind us, so we just figured maybe that car made ours bounce. 

We finally left the parking garage area, and were making our way through the crowded streets of downtown D.C.  We were at a standstill at one point, and, I commented quite a few times on how odd it was that crowds of people were just standing outside the office buildings at around 2:00 in the afternoon.  I kept thinking that it was Tuesday -- so there should be nothing going on.  A few times I noticed people looking up and pointing, but I couldn't see what they were pointing at.  There wasn't any "excitement" in the crowds of people.  They were just standing, talking to each other, or, using their cellphones.

We finally made our way out of downtown D.C. and found ourselves stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the highway.  Again, we thought that it was odd to be stuck in that kind of traffic on the highway at around 2:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday.  There was also bumper to bumper traffic going in the opposite direction.

As we were driving, the car phone rang.  Rick sighed -- thinking it was his work calling -- again (they called us as we were travelling to D.C.)  But, it was Grandma.  She cleared up our mystery for the day -- informing us about the earthquake.

Someone was definitely watching over us yesterday -- if we had known about "the earthquake" while it was happening -- or if all those people just standing around had known about it and panicked -- I would not be sitting here posting a funny photo and calmly typing.

You want to hear something weird?  As we were walking away from the car after we parked it in the underground garage, I pictured the hood of the car smashed flat and thought to myself -- "Gee, if there was an earthquake... {insert spooky music here}

Oh, wait... Nicholas just read this post and reminded me that the day before this happened, while we were walking in the parking garage of the hotel, he commented to me that if felt like the ground was moving beneath him...  Was this a premonition?  {insert screetchy sounds from Ghost Adventures here }