Paul and I had a weekend adventure on Saturday. Every trip downtown is an adventure when you're still trying to get around, and our intention was only to go to the downtown Barnes and Noble, a place Paul has longed to go to since we saw its noble edifice over the Inner Harbor. Who cares about the nearby Hard Rock Cafe or ESPN Zone? - Books! are what counts. Anyhow, I decided to park as close as reasonably possible without spending $20 on parking. I've been in more parking garages since moving here than I ever have in my life. I'm finally getting the hang of figuring out how to go up and down in the darned things. I mean, even the malls have multi-story parking garages. So, we finally find one that is $4 for an entire weekend day - down by city hall, which is, by the way, a charming older classical style building with a park. The adventure begins almost immediately, as on the walk toward downtown, I discover we are parked near a "gentleman's row" of shops. We move along briskly, while I'm on the outlook to turn around if needed, but it's only a side block so we move along. One block later, we pass the Baltimore International School. Things change quickly around here.

By comparison, you're pretty much OK in Denver for blocks upon blocks, but here you can stumble over the old Laramier square type blocks pretty often. The other different thing here is that there are many old stone buildings.

After we buy tons of books and eat a quick lunch, where I scrape up change for a panhandler because I'm flat out of cash, we head back. I'm planning on paying to get out of the garage by using plastic, but the ticket machine is broken. We end up at the manned exit, where they only take cash, so, as I'm backing up to attempt to leave the car and find a way to either an ATM or where the other ticket machine is, the fellow in line behind us says he'll pay for us. It's only $4 and its not like I don't have access to enough money, but he sees the Wyoming plates, the USAA sticker which labels us as military, (which we use because Frank used to be in the Air Force) and he pays. Isn't that sweet? It didn't make it any faster for him to leave, even, it was just a nice thing to do. He said he was an Army colonel (Virginia plates).

See, there are nice folks in Baltimore!

woman at the well