I program ye' ol' GPS unit for a restaurant John has found on line, and we're off!
Lovely drive - especially with your best friend by your side - and just before we get to Richmond we know from earlier trips that there is a humongous Wal-Mart. John decides to stop there and mosey around since we're a bit ahead of schedule. I've been trying to get him to buy a coat before really cold weather kicks in. Well, if you know John, he's part polar bear. He's determined not to get a coat, but he will consider a light jacket of some sort. I see a zippered hoodie that's super-soft and lined with super-soft faux-fleece - and it's only $20. Surprise! John likes it.
At checkout it rings up for something like $27 (with tax.) We're certain the sign said $20, so I march off for confirmation. Sure 'nough, $20 it was. So we go over to the Customer Service Center, 'splain what we're there for, and SHE marches off for confirmation. YEA! we were right. (Duh.) So we get our $7 refund and hit the road.
Now we're NOT ahead of schedule, but still doin' good. Lil' Miss GPS is in control and in no time we're zeroing in on the restaurant address. Only there's no restaurant. There is a huge, gated corporate parking lot and no retail in sight. Aargh. We end up at (another) Long John Silver's. It's good, just not the Mexican I was expecting. Then off we go to the IMAX.
Uh-huh. Another glitch. Right at the intersection we have to cross to get to the IMAX parking lot the road is barricaded for a MARATHON! I mean, come on, a parade can pass you by, but a marathon goes on forever... As far as we can see to the left and right are police and barricades.
John, control the adrenaline. Breathe. There is either a way to drive across, or we'll park on this side and do a lil' marathon of our own. So we start circling blocks, probing, penetrating the defenses. By sheer dumb luck (no GPS involved) we find a tiny back street and, for whatever reason, the police direct us across the marathon route. We end up behind the Science Museum and fumble our way to a parking lot that might work.
We hustle as best we can with my slight vertigo still aggravating me, and yea! we've made it.
The Richmond Science Museum and IMAX Theater started out as a train station. You might say it was a fancy building for a train station, but travel back then was almost considered exotic. Look at the dinnerware used to serve travelers aboard the trains back then:
They had display cases with some pretty cool model trains and train memorabilia.
Several years ago John bought a copy of the "Lewis and Clark" soundtrack, and it is one of my most favorite CD's. I was really looking forward to seeing this film. So, down we go into the bowels of this enormous building. Down and down some more. Finally at the bottom, we enter the theater and, guess what, up and up and up we have to walk to get to the "middle" seats. Sound like a pain? Try it with a mild case of vertigo. At least the "down and down" part was in a series of staircases. Inside the theater it was simply a one-line-of-steps-up ordeal. Half dark as theaters are wont to be, everyone that had arrived before us watching, I stagger on like a drunk lil' ol' lady. (Take comfort in the fact we were far, far from home and completely anonymous... It's a good thing we DIDN'T come with the church!)
Finally, we reach the seats we think will be good, sit, and look up at the screen. Uh, oh. This may not be so cool. After a little experimenting I find that if I close one eye the surround-motion that is the hallmark of IMAX isn't so "dizzying." (Kind of defeats the whole concept of being "in" the moment, huh.) I close the eye on the side away from John so that he doesn't know. The film (as I saw it) was good, the story was great, the music was phenomenal.
In the after-film notes I catch something about the death of Merriwether Lewis at the young age of 35 in 1809, and William Clark living to a ripe old age with lots of children and grandchildren. It triggers something I had read a few years back about Clark's "suicide" actually being a murder. I Google it and find on the History News Network:
Here is an expert in firearms who bumbles along, shooting his head ("grazing" it or blowing away a "piece of his forehead") then his chest (side, back, or abdomen and possibly stopping to reload since Mrs. Grinder (the owner of the inn he is staying at on the Neches Traces) said there were three shots from his two single-shot pistols). He then crawls to the next cabin to beg for water, and crawls back to his cabin before lingering for several more hours in agony. Incredibly, some stories depict the medical officer of the Lewis and Clark expedition now unable to locate any vital artery as he slashes himself wildly with his razor before he finally perishes. This is the version that many claim is the most plausible explanation for Lewis's death.
His body was exhumed in the 1840's and the determination then was that he was shot in the back of the head. (That explains the missing piece of his forehead.) How many suicides have you heard of where the person shot himself in the back of the head?
As for William Clark, as I said he lived to a ripe old age, but did you know he raised Sacagawea's son from the time he was six years old? Check this out from the Lewis and Clark website:
Sacagawea’s
son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, or “Pompy,” was three months
old when the Corps of Discovery left Fort Mandan. His parents accepted
William Clark’s offer to educate him, and he moved into Clark’s
St. Louis home when he was six. At age 18, he went to Europe for six
years with Duke Paul of Wuerttemburg, an enthusiastic early tourist
of the American West. Returning to the U.S., Jean Baptiste became a
mountain man and fur trader, and a guide whose clients included John
C. Frémont. He later settled in California, and died in Oregon,
en route to Montana, in 1866.
And so, that is, as they say, the rest of the story. Adieu.
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