October 5

I rode the bike trail through Rock Creek Park this morning. Most of it is in Maryland, but the last four miles or so are through Washington DC. The creek forms a deep ravine, and except for the National Zoo there is nothing except the noise of traffic, and about three large, stately even, viaducts that cross it, that would indicate that one is traversing the capital of the most powerful country ever. I encountered hardly anyone there.

No other cyclists, just a couple of joggers, a group of homeless people, and a parks employee who spoke no English. (I'm still too shy to practice my meager Spanish, but there is a lot of it, spoken and on signs, all along my route.) When I thought I must be as close as I was going to get to the White House, the Capitol, and all that, I rode up out of the ravine onto Avenue P and then onto Connecticut Ave., which becomes 17 th Street. I stopped at a blockade manned by a couple of officers in conversation with another cyclist, to ask directions to the Lincoln Memorial, which is all I really wanted to see. The officer who wasn't dealing with the other cyclist was very friendly, even though the sign on the barricade read something like, "No further progress without valid ID", and he gave me clear directions. I pulled into an adjacent park and called Erin. Told her I was looking at the Washington Monument. She told me to say something for her at the Lincoln Memorial.

All through this trip I have felt as I did thirty-five years ago, when Erin and I and all our friends were ardently opposing the Viet Nam war. I have felt that I don't really belong to this nation, that it is owned by those who would crush all opposition to the agenda of greed they call the American way. That feeling left me at the Lincoln Memorial. There, I owned this country, as did Martin Luther King, Jr., when he gave that beautiful speech, and as did the other visitors with me.