Funny how things work.
My roommate and I went to D.C. over fall break. His girlfriend goes to Georgetown, so she wasn't too impressed when we showed her our pictures from the first day of our excursion.
When it came to amazing-looking (to us) pictures of the monuments and memorials, she'd been there, done that. On of first day of exploration of the city, we even walked - for four hours - back from the Capitol to Georgetown. We made our way up the National Mall, to all the monuments, past the White House, back to the monuments, to the Potomac River, over to George Washington University's neat, urban campus and, finally, up Pennsylvania Avenue and back to the Georgetown neighborhood.
Tired, sore and impressed with ourselves, we told her of our trek, and she merely laughed and said, "People do that all time. People try to walk back from all over the place and get lost all the time."
Little did we know.
Despite our setbacks, we were determined to take an impressive picture or at least do something impressive.
The next day we fake climbed out of the Potomac River - hanging over the edge, holding onto the railings - which was probably a bit dangerous considering there was no ledge beneath us.
We really were determined.
After looking at our fairly impressive pictures, we decided we still hadn't taken "the one" - the one picture that would be the ultimate impressor.
We continued our walk, tried to think of other outrageous poses and arrived at the FDR Memorial.
It was getting dark, and all we had were a few photos of us climbing out of the Potomac River.
Then, there he was.
There walked Bono - the legendary rock star from U2 who just this week appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.
The sun was setting, so besides my roommate and me, Bono and the three other people (including a bodyguard) who walked with him, there were not many sightseeing tourists around.
Unsure if we should bother him at first, we kept walking and eventually decided we had to ask.
"Sorry to interrupt," we said, "but would you mind taking a picture with us?"
"For sure, man," Bono said in his Irish accent.
Sporting his infamous tinted sunglasses, his shiny earrings, his dark boots and his black leather jacket, he even posed, and some guy in a suit - maybe his agent - took our picture.
Bono was nice about it.
We told him we were from Notre Dame.
"Ah, beautiful campus. I loved that campus," he said, remembering his visit several years ago for a sold-out concert.
We told him thanks and walked on in disbelief. He continued his short tour of the memorial and hopped in his ride.
Needless to say, we decided we had found a fairly impressive picture.
This time, we took the metro instead of making the tiring jaunt back to Georgetown.
