Kind of playing catch up here… still basking in MFO’s honor
of being named (SMC) Woman of the Year. We
may have to change her from MFO to WOY.
In which case I would be HOWOY (Husband Of…..).
Anyway, as you might recall (I barely do) I teased you with
a picture of where’s Waldo/Feeder a bit ago.
It was part of a trip to Bal’mer (attempt at local dialect for “Charm
City). I may have mentioned that MFO
attended a workshop for disaster planning in relation to historical documents and
stuff. She is preparing a disaster plan
for St. Mary’s County Historical society where she “volunteers” as the unofficial
county Archivist.
As the meeting was on Tuesday we drove up late in the
afternoon Monday and stayed at the Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards. As I think I have mentioned before sometimes
you can get a good rate the top of the line property instead of the Courtyard
or Fairfield’s of the world. And, due to
our traveling around and always staying at Marriott properties (and cashing in
some points) we are at the “Gold” level, which gets us access to the concierge
lounge and generally a room on a higher floor (why that is considered a perc, I
am not sure). The hotel had hosted the
Colonial Athletic Association basketball championship over the weekend (UNCW winner). They still hadn't "de-decorated" the hotel, and there was basketball replicats here and there, along with pennants from all the participating schools. Anyway, we had a room on an upper floor where
we could see a corner of Camden Yards Ball Field.
We had acceptable room service for dinner watching
basketball. MFO/WOY’s workshop started
at 0800, at the nearby B&O Railroad Museum, and instead of getting the
fluttermobile out of the parking garage, she graciously taxied over, leaving me
to soak in a bit. After a while, I levered
myself out of the sack, and went to the concierge lounge for breakfast. It was on the top (?) floor and afforded a
good view of the Inner Harbor over the convention center.
Also afforded a good view of the breakfast buffet
Which included bacon.
Real bacon. And the rest of the food was pretty good.
Back to the room, I read USA today, kind of puttered around for a while, and then checked out
and went over to the Railroad Museum to wait for her to be released for lunch. It’s a very nice facility with inside and
outside exhibits. The inside part is in
the building that replicates a roundhouse (Where Waldo was)
It was a lovely day so I spent some time outside, looking at
the little “model” train go round and round (and round and round...)
Finally MFO emerged with a sheet supplied by the hosts of
eateries in the area. It included such
hot spots as McDonalds and BK, but also some local options. We found one fairly close by named
(appropriately) the Camden Pub.
Have you ever parked on the streets of Baltimore? they have some sort of bizarre system that requires stuffing it with quarters or inserting a credit card. We managed to scrape together enough quarters (15 minutes per) to cover that allotted hour and a half.lunch time and walked over to the Pub. There
was outdoor seating which was occupied, so I didn’t get an exterior shot out of
consideration of the diners there.
It
had the earmarks of going on the “just right” list, as it looked like it had been there for
years. We opted for inside seating, and
the interior didn’t do anything to dissuade this opinion. It was packed with Oriole and Raven
memorabilia of various sorts, strengthening the prospective “just right”
designation.
There were maybe four or five other tables occupied by some
luncheon guests, but not really slammed.
We sat at one end of a community
type table that was unoccupied. The
first storm cloud appeared on the horizon when after maybe five lonely moments
the (only visible) server gave us the deadly “I’ll be right with you”, which
she was, after maybe two more minutes when she delivered the menus. They were leaning back toward the “just right” side
of things being the plastic laminated page you would expect, filled with clever
titles for the various sections
She appeared again, asking about drinks and I selected a beer
from the list on the other side of the card, and was informed they were out of
that particular selection. I chose
another and MFO asked for tea, and off she went. And went.
And went. And went. During the lull, MFO
began furtively looking at the clock (we had about 45 more minutes of the allotted
hour and a half lunch break). Food began
coming out for other tables mostly delivered with a “Sorry for the delay”. Uh oh.
Finally she came to the table for our order, and MFO selected a crab
wrap.. Oh, sorry, we’re out of
crab (Baltimore Maryland, no crab?). Back to the menu. While she pondered, my turn: I’ll have (a long forgotten)
sandwich, I think maybe a chicken something.
Oh dear, we just ran out of chicken.
Okay, then I’ll have a club sandwich (ham, beef, and turkey). Fine.
Off to the kitchen. Tick tock,
tick tock, with MFO growing more fidgety.
Ah, here comes the server – “Cook says that the sliced turkey is gone,
but she’ll put more beef and ham".
Fine. Just go away.
Time goes by, and with about fifteen minutes left and a bare table MFO had had enough, went to the bar and said we had better have our order to go. Profuse apologies, but no consideration,
another few minutes passed before we were presented with bags of food. We had spent well over an hour in the
establishment without anything to eat.
Brisk walk to the car and a short drive back to the museum, I delivered
her to the door and she was late for the resumption of the session. I’m not sure what went wrong with Camden Pub,
half the menu not available, tables of unattended guests, and only one
server. You might note in the interior
shot of the bar, the server lady behind it appears blurred. I should tell you that is a function of the
camera, not indicative of her. Off the
just right list. Camden Pub needed
extra innings.
So after a miffed MFO went back to her workshop I was left
alone for the rest of the afternoon. An
oddity about Charm City is that both the Walters and Baltimore Art Museum
as well as the Maryland Historical Society don’t choose to be open to the
public on Mondays and Tuesdays (which this was)
After looking at the exhibits (mostly train cars of various
vintages) in the roundhouse, I just went and settled on a park bench out of the
warming sun. A couple of minutes later
they announced a “tour” would begin in ten minutes in one of the out buildings. So I joined a couple of other patrons, and
our guide, Walter, began the tour. As with
a lot of museums in the time of limited budgets their docents tend to be
retired volunteers. Like me at Historic St. Mary’s City. Plus they/we
tend to be very interested in their subject.
Well, Walter was passionate about trains. I will freely admit that I am not absorbed
by them, they’re okay, but I’m not consumed by them. Walter was.
I don’t begrudge that, I am glad they have such a dedicated
volunteer. We spent the next hour and a
half hearing about train Number so and so, it’s history, the engineering
development of its fire box, other innovations and so on.
As an engineer, I did appreciate the amount of intricate
tubing, valves, huge forgings, and so on that went into those massive steam
engines
They certainly are a piece of Americana, and if you like
trains the B&O Museum is definitely worth the trip. Eventually MFO appeared and we headed
home. Once home, we got our “carry out”
from the Camden Pub and had dinner. I
had my “no turkey, (but extra ham and beef)” club.
MFO got a lot of good information from her
workshop, and I learned a whole lot about railroads and trains. At that point we did not get
DFD
DFD
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