My eastern uncle died (unexpectedly but peacefully in his sleep), the one who lives in ritzy Chevy Chase, Maryland. The memorial service is this coming Thursday and several of us Western cousins are flying out there for it. The dates have worked out surprisingly okay with the Memorial Day holiday, so just about everyone is getting there Wednesday and leaving Saturday.

I have a non-stop flight from Denver to Reagan National and then I will take the Wash DC Metro to either Friendship Heights or Bethesda stations. My ditzy cousin Cathy from California is renting a mini-van and called the other day all officious and bossy (Mr. Troutbend says when is she anything else?) and told me she is taking it upon herself to pick everyone up at the airports, thereby taking the burden off my cousins who live there very near their (now deceased) dad's house where we are all going to stay. One of them who grew up there will be there from Boston, and he will have nothing better to do than pick people up, but I didn't point that out to her.

While she is telling me that she WILL pick me up, she's telling me stories about waiting an hour for someone to come get her because she stood in the wrong place after getting off the Metro, the same stop I will be using.

That night she is going to drive across town in the mini van to pick up her sister Elly who thinks she is pyschic (Elly, not Cathy, Cathy is the religious one) at National Airport at 11 pm. Cathy has more stories about getting to airports herself expecting to rent a car at midnight and having to wait four hours for the place to open, and getting lost at night in bad neighborhoods in just about every town she has driven in. I'm betting this will be another experience to add to her repertoire.

It would make more sense to me if the guys who live there and grew up there did the driving around to pick people up, but as long as I get picked up and over to the house, I will be fine and it won't be my problem.

Whether or not I will feel that Cathy needs company for the midnight excursion remains to be seen. Maybe if one of the eastern cousins would drive, I would go along for the ride.

It is amazing what you can find on the Internet nowadays: there is a site that shows you what each of the Wash DC Metro stations look like at street level. It's better than Google Earth in some ways, although I was using the two of them together. Anyhow, imagine seeing pictures of where you could be standing in a few days and it's not even a very famous place.

I did email to one of the sons of the deceased, and asked him where I should tell Cathy to pick me up. These eastern cousins are very uptight Ivy-league lawyer types and treat us western cousins like foolish hill billys, which may be true, but so what. I'm counting on them wanting to have things go smoothly so they won't have to have any stressful moments worrying about us wandering around in the big city without a clue as to where we are. Not that they would care so much about us, but would know that eventually we would find ourselves and give them a load of crap about it next chance we got.

This concern about connecting with Cathy has eclipsed my other concern about changing from one Metro line to the other. It is all underground, and my directions get turned around especially if I sat facing forward or backward or the doors open on a different side than I got on, so I will have to ask strangers to make sure I get on the right train. This doesn't bother me too much, because I will never see these people again. And you can count on me asking for help buying a ticket if I need to.

Coming back, my nice eastern girl cousin will be putting me on the Metro at its far north end, and I'll have the change of trains underground again, but it will be Saturday, and maybe not as hectic down there, and I'll have done it recently.