Day 3 Quick Hits

Starting location: Olney, Md.
Notable stops: The White House, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Washington Monument, U.S. Capitol Building, Nationals Park
Ending location: Olney, Md.

Miles driven: 32
Miles walked: 5
Time spent in vehicle: 45 minutes
Time spent in subway: 1.5 hours
Time spent walking: 3.5 hours

States driven through: 1 (Maryland)
CDs listened to: 1
Game result: Cardinals beat Nationals, 6-1

History watch: Colin visited Washington, D.C. for the first time. He claimed his next visit to the nation's capital will be as an elected official.

On a historic baseball note, tonight's rain delay lasted longer than the game. The two rain delays combined for a total of 2:47. The actual game only took 2:20.

Amazing Americana sight of the day: Only in Washington can you get away with awesome stuff like this -- a sign for surveillance cameras desecrated with a crack about Big Brother. The 'Copyright 1984' line just completes this fantastic bit of hilarity.

Food Bargain of the Day: Unlike Baltimore, there aren't any great eating places outside of the stadium yet. Food at Nats Park was a little pricier than most, but still not bad. But for $0.00, you may not be able to beat these amazingly appetizing rain-soaked nachos.

Random Valpo Sighting: This is where it gets really crazy. We're tired and starving, but before we grabbed a bite to eat, we wanted to catch a bit of batting practice. There are two Cardinals fans next to us down the left field line, a father and son, and we start chatting with them.

We tell them about the baseball tour, and the father asks where we're from. We tell him we just graduated from Valparaiso University in Indiana, when the man throws his hands up in the air and cracks a big smile on his face.

"No way," I say, astonished.

"Class of 1970," he answered.

His name is Bill Brockschmidt and he's from Springfield, Ill. He has season tickets in the left field bleachers at Busch Stadium, and goes to about 50 games a year, selling the rest of his tickets to other Cardinals fans in town. He's a big, big 'Birds fan and proudly showed us a picture of him and his son in the Busch bleachers, as the World Series podium was set up on the field behind them after the Cards won the title in 2006.

We exchanged some Valpo stories, and he had some good ones. He was there during the infamous Valpo campus uproar after the shootings at Kent State. The Valpo protest ended with students setting the adminstration building on fire.

I'll be sitting in the left field bleachers for a Cubs-Cards game at Busch on the 4th of July this year, so hopefully I'll run into Bill again.

I swear, the Lutheran universe gets smaller every day.

It's a good thing we met Bill, too. Otherwise, the Random Valpo Sighting was going to be this circular bathroom near the Vietnam Memorial, which strangely resembles the Wehrenberg Hall cafeteria.