This summer is going so fast! I was privileged to attend Railroad Day on Capitol Hill again this year to represent BNSF Railway and lobby with several Congressman and Senators on railroad issues. I left at 4:15 Wednesday, July 13, 2011 to catch my plane at 6:30 in Kansas City. I flew into Reagan National airport and took a taxi from there to the Grand Hyatt Washington, checked in then went to the BNSF Washington D.C. office for meetings that began at noon with a lunch/speaker from Oklahoma, a new member of the House, James Lankford who actually represents my sister Iva's district. After lunch and his talk we gathered for a picture. We then had a presentation on issues concerning BNSF that we would talk about on Thursday.
After that we all walked over the the Library of Congress for a pre-arranged tour with the Museum curator. We were able to see the special exhibit that will end in August of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. It was a once in a lifetime experience to see the real handwritten documents that our fore-fathers worked so hard on. We were also able to see Ben Franklin's Library on display. It was amazing to see the collection of books that one man had in that era of history that had been preserved for the most part. Some were burned when the Capitol burned in the 1800's, but since they had all been catalogued by Ben Franklin they have been able to replace some of them and have spacers in for the missing ones. It was amazing.
They also had on display a collection that had been loaned to them for a short time of pictures of soldiers of the civil war that were on tin-types that had been amazingly preserved. They are trying to find the identities of many of them, but the ones they have identified are on their website. I hope to have time to get online and look at them further to see if any of them might be related.
The Libary of Congress is where all the copyright applications come to, so they have a copy of every book that has been copyrighted in the United States of America. The building architecture was also amazing. There was only one part where I was able to take pictures, the rest was off limits to picture taking.
After the tour, it was pouring down rain and everyone got sopping wet as we hailed cabs to ride back to the office for more instruction.
We left the office about 5:20 to go back to the hotel to change clothes and meet at an Italian restaurant at 6 named Carmine's for a six course meal that was fantastic, while we listened to two more Congressman, Rick Larsen from Washington, then Jim Matheson from Utah, then we all walked back to the hotel around 9p.m. exhausted after a very long day. I called Clinton and went to bed.
Thursday morning, July 14, 2011 started very early with registration beginning at 6:30a.m. and breakfast/meeting beginning at 7a.m.. We left about 8:30 to head over to the House of Representatives by taking the Metro (subway train), the escalator on the House side was broken so we had to walk up the stairs from the subway--a long ways to the top. My appointments started at 9:30 beginning with the staffer for Adrian Smith, representative from Nebraska. At 10:30 my appointment was with the Speaker of the House--John Boehner, but he was in meetings so we met with his staffer too who was very knowledgeable about Railroad issues. I arrived at my 11:00 on time, but was told that everyone had already been there (early) and had met and dispersed--so I did not get to see Jim Cooper from TN. Back in the hallway I saw a friend from Ft. Worth, Joe Featherston, he was waiting for his 11:30 appointment and asked if I wanted to join that one, so I did. It was with the Representative from Iowa, Dave Loubsack and he was in. We had a very interesting conversation with him on the economy, railroad, and trucking issues.
After that we had a short break for lunch, so we walked over to a little Chinese restaurant for lunch. After lunch I walked from the restaurant down 2nd Street all the way over to the Senate buildings, taking a little break to look at a small museum about Women's suffrage. At 2:00 p.m. I met with Senator Kelly Ayotte from NH. She was very interesting and very concerned about the short line railroads in her state and the overall economy. At 3:00 I met with the staffer for Richard Lugar, Senator from IN. I was not terribly impressed with her or what she had to say about Senator Lugar's lack of interest in the rail industry (oh well, you cannot win them all) My last appointment was at 4:00 with Senator John Boozman from Arkansas, he was very interesting and spent a lot of time talking to all of us about our concerns and the economy. I expressed to him after the meeting that I had heard from many people that they were very unhappy with Obama taking his family on extravagant vacations at our expense during these economic hard times. He agreed with me, but don't know if it will go anywhere.
After my last meeting I walked over to John McCain's office because I promised my son John that I would. He was not in and was on his way to the airport to go to Arizona, but I wrote a long note and left it with his aid to give to him.
I then walked toward the Metro station but about 2 blocks from it I decided to take a cab back to the hotel because it was getting late. It was a good thing that I did because when I got back to the hotel and turned on the news it said that there had been a fire on a train in the station that I was going to, and there was chaos with the people, but none were hurt.
I changed clothes and freshened up and got ready to attend the reception and dinner. The food was wonderful, and so were the speakers and entertainment. The President of the American Association of Railroads, Ed Hamberger spoke, as well as others. They said we did well and had gotten our message across to many that day, with over 500 of us working at it all day. It was a long day and my feet really hurt--I have got to find some comfortable dress shoes for walking. I talked with Clinton, then Laura called and we talked for a bit, and I was exhausted.
Friday, I was able to sleep in until 7:30, then packed, showered, and got ready for another big day! I had breakfast at the hotel, checked out, then Joe Featherston drove me to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and dropped me off on his way to visit with a BNSF supplier that he had an appointment with. I was able to see the Enola Gay--the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb in WWII, the Enterprise Space Shuttle, the Blackhawk, the Concorde and many other airplanes. It was an amazing museum. I left there at 1, catching a shuttle bus to Dulles Airport, then catching a bus back to Washington D.C. then catching the Metro to Reagan National airport. It was quite a day by the time I caught my flight to come home to Kansas. I slept a little on the flight, then drove back to Topeka, picked up Clinton and went to Topeka Steak House for dinner and caught up on everything.
Today Clinton headed to Coffeyville to work on his 1968 El Camino with his brother-in law Rick again, so I went to work and caught up on all of my email and some other things. It has been a long, hard, but very rewarding week. I hope I made a little difference.
