New Year's Day + 1

Anyone who's lived in DC a long time knows that sometime in early January, we are usually treated to a brief respite from the winter cold weather. That happened on New Year's weekend, and so Sunday I paid homage to the thaw by getting on my bike and riding, with my camera in my bag ready to capture some scenes of the new year. I'd planned to head south, downtown, but as I headed down my street, something told me to ride north instead. So I turned up 13th and followed the rolling hills northward.

As I got up towards Brightwood, I saw this:



This lovely tower has always reminded me of DC's own Eiffel Tower, and I'd always wanted to photograph it. So this was my chance. I took a few shots, feeling a little paranoid that in this age of homeland insecurity, someone might question me, especially since it's right on the lot of a police station. But a number of cop cars went by without even glancing at me, and it turned out the biggest problem was getting my camera up to my eye while wearing a bike helmet.

I still had no idea what the tower actually was, so when I got home, I did a little Googling. It's called Hughes Memorial Tower. In my memory, it seems to have been there forever, but it was built in 1989, the year I first moved into the city, and it was built without regard to DC's height laws, and apparently it sometimes showers the neighborhood with chunks of falling ice in winter. But from a distance it's still beautiful.