September 6
It was just getting light inside my room when I woke up. I was on the sunrise side of the train, but unlike the train in California we weren't right on the coast so I couldn't really see the horizon.
I had to go down the hall to use the shower, 'cause my room didn't have one of its own. And I went to the wrong end of the car first, then had to go back to the other end.
It was nicer than the Superliner shower, 'cause it was bigger, but there was only one in the whole car and 'cause people don't like sharing showers it might leave a lot of people waiting their turn in the morning.
There wasn't anybody waiting outside when I got out of the shower so I went back to my room and sat on my bed and combed my mane and tail, and then I preened my wings. Mister Salvatore had said that we were getting off the train before breakfast, so I made sure that everything was still in my saddlebags, then I sat down on the bed and looked at the scenery out the window.
I'd picked a good time to start looking out the window, 'cause we went through a little town and then some woods, and then the train crossed over a bridge and pretty soon we were running right alongside of the Potomac River. We went past an airport that had some green air force airplanes outside of it, and then pretty soon we were in the city, although still pretty close to the river.
We passed over it and then the train started to slow down and I got my saddlebags and was standing outside my door before Mister Salvatore came down to make sure I was awake.
We waited with the conductor until the train finally stopped at the station, and he helped us put our bags on the platform and then thanked us for taking Amtrak.
Mister Salvatore found a locker that we could put our bags in and then we decided that the first thing to do was to go get breakfast and then we'd go to the Air and Space Museum as soon as it opened so that we could spend all day there.
There was a restaurant called Pret A Manger right in the train station, and they had breakfast sandwiches, so I got one with egg and mushroom which was pretty good. And their coffee was good, too. They said that their coffee was fair trade and their eggs were cage-free and I didn't know exactly what that meant, so Miss Cherilyn said that meant that they paid a fair price for their coffee and that the chickens who laid the eggs weren't kept in little cages.
I had never heard of chickens being kept in cages, and I couldn't think of why anybody would want to. All you needed was a coop and maybe a fence to keep predators out.
We got on the mini-Marc and took it to the Air and Space Museum. I flew down the Mall until I got to the front doors then flew back because I was a lot faster than Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn and it was rude to rush ahead of them like that. Then I flew back to the museum again because I thought I'd seen a sign on the door that said it was closed, and I was right—I had seen that. So I flew back to them and Mister Salvatore looked at his watch and then said that he hadn't remembered when they opened but he promised me that they would be open because the only day that they were closed was Christmas, or when the government was shut down because Congress couldn't agree on a federal budget.
So we had over an hour to find something else to do, and Miss Cherilyn suggested that we could go to the castle because it was open now and it might be fun.
It was neat because it told us about all the other museums and what we could see there, and the computers would try and answer your questions when you talked to them. I could get mine to do things by talking to it but it wouldn't talk back to me.
There were a lot of museums and I think I could have spent a week just looking at them if I wanted to see everything. Maybe ponies should have a week to look at museums, but I wasn't sure when would be the best time. Right after we came would probably be confusing, it would be too much all at once and a lot of it wouldn't mean anything. But right before we left could be time better spent with our friends.
Maybe they'd already thought about it and maybe there were some ponies who spent their summer vacations going from museum to museum. I guess I was kind of sad that I'd never have a chance to see them all, but I didn't regret how I'd spent my summer.
Even though it was still too early, we went back outside and I flew a big lap around the Mall, and then the second time I went around I landed next to a wedge that had marble soldiers in it, which was a monument to the Korean War. And then I flew on to an ornate marble gazebo, and when I got back to Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn he said that the marble gazebo was a monument to World War One.
So that made six wars that I'd heard about and I was pretty sure that I remembered that America wasn't even three centuries old yet so I asked Mister Salvatore just how many wars they'd had and he said that it depended on how you counted, but at least eight significant wars. So then I wanted to know how come there had been so many and Miss Cherilyn said that would take weeks to explain and she was pretty sure that there had been more than eight. She said that she wasn't sure if there had ever been a time when America wasn't at war with somebody.
Mister Salvatore said that was really cynical and she said that didn't make it any less true.
I wasn't sure what to believe. I'd seen a lot of the country on my trips so far, and it didn't look like it was at war. I wasn't exactly sure what a war even looked like, though.
We were waiting on the museum steps when they opened the doors, and Mister Salvatore said that we had to leave by three to make our next train but as long as I promised to be by the main doors by then I could go around the museum by myself.
Well, that was nice of him but I didn't want to. It would have been lonely by myself. So I said that I wanted to see the airplanes first because they had the largest collection of airplanes in America including the very first one, but I didn't want to do it by myself and that made him happy. So he reached down and petted my mane and said that we'd all go see the airplanes.
We looked at the Wright Flier and it was hard to imagine how the Dreamliner had come from that. Their airplane was cloth and sticks, and now airplanes were made out of metal or fancy tape. And there were some other older airplanes that were just as simple as it was. But it was very important because it was the first real airplane that humans had invented.
There was also the Spirit of St. Louis, which was famous because the pilot was the first one to cross the Atlantic by airplane all by himself. He flew it around some after that and then he flew it to Washington and gave it to the Smithsonian and it had been here ever since then.
It was next to the Bell X-1 which was powered by a rocket and was the first airplane to fly faster than sound. I didn't think you could fly faster than sound, but Mister Salvatore told me that there were now lots of airplanes that did and there even used to be a passenger airplane which did, but it didn't fly anymore.
Then there was a strange funnel-shaped spaceship called the Columbia, which had flown to the moon atop a giant rocket. Mister Salvatore said that there had been three men inside and they'd gone to the moon in it, and had been the first humans to ever set foot on the moon. He said that the landing module was called the Eagle, and it was still on the moon or else it would be in the museum, too.
And there was also an airplane called SpaceShipOne, which was the first space rocket that hadn't been built by a government. After it had gone to space and toured America, it was also flown to Washington and donated to the Smithsonian.
I was curious how many other famous airplanes had just been flown to the Smithsonian and given to it.
A lot of the airplanes hung from wires from the ceiling and Miss Cherilyn thought that was because airplanes belonged in the air and Mister Salvatore thought that was so people couldn't touch them and it was too bad that you couldn't get a really close look at them, especially since he said that I shouldn't fly inside after I reminded him that hanging airplanes in a pegasus museum wouldn't keep pegasuses from touching them.
There was a big room full of old passenger airplanes, and they were really small compared to the modern ones I'd seen. They were probably the size of airplane that Casey had said that Boeing made which was too reliable, and I looked around for Boeings. There was a 247, and there was also a cockpit from an Airbus A320 which was not as fancy as the one in the Dreamliner but a lot more complicated than the one in the Cessna.
And in one room there was even a moon rock that you could touch, although it was under a cover that my hooves couldn't reach through which I thought was kind of unfair, 'cause Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn both got to touch it and I didn't. It was a little triangle of rock, and it didn't really look like that much but it had been brought all the way back from the moon which was pretty amazing.
We ate a really late lunch and it wasn't much but we were all kind of tired and hungry and they wanted a chance to rest their feet for a little bit. It must be hard to have to walk around on only two legs all the time.
They also had a special theater called an IMAX where we could watch a movie, and instead of being a big flat screen like I'd seen before it wrapped around and the chairs tilted back so that you could see it almost all around you. We watched a movie called To Fly!, and that was really neat. It was kind of short, but it gave a history of how humans flew, and some of it was almost like being flying. I accidentally hit both of them with my wings when the movie was flying sometimes, 'cause it was almost like flying for real, since all I could see around me was the sky.
One room had a display of flight gear, and that was kind of fun to see, since I had my own that I had to wear. And it was kind of interesting that humans wore things like hats to keep their heads warm and goggles to protect their eyes and scarves to keep their necks warm and even special suits that were almost like diving suits, but none of them had to wear bright yellow vests or blinking lights or camelbacks.
Before we left, we stopped in the gift shop and there were a couple of big books that had pictures of all the airplanes and facts about them and Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn bought them for me which was really nice of them. They said that they wanted me to have something that I could take back and show other pegasuses and I promised that I would. But I was going to read through them, too, until I knew everything about all the airplanes that were in the museum.
I didn't want to leave the museum because I still hadn't seen everything but our train wasn't going to wait for us, and Miss Cherilyn didn't approve of Mister Salvatore's idea of cancelling our train tickets, renting a car, and driving back home overnight. Even when he told her that we were going to wind up in a rental car eventually so why not now. But we did have enough time to look at the strange spaceships that had flown around the moon and looked at it to make sure it was somewhere that humans could actually land and walk, and then others that had made more detailed maps of it. Even now there were more spaceships that were looking at the moon and learning new things about it and taking new pictures of it.
On our way back to the train station, Mister Salvatore said that there were crazy people who didn't think that we'd actually landed on the moon, that it had all been made up and all the movies and pictures had been fake, and even now that there were satellites taking pictures of the moon that showed footprints and tire tracks and the moon rovers still sitting where they'd been left. And I thought that was kind of dumb but he said that some people were dumb.
Our train was waiting for us when we got to the station, and after the conductor showed us to our rooms we went to the dining car for dinner.
Mister Salvatore said that it had been one of the funnest vacations he'd ever had and Miss Cherilyn said that was just because he'd gotten to fly airplane simulators, and he said that was true and it was much more entertaining than visiting photography museums and he really felt like he'd learned something on the trip. And he said that I ought to have a beer or something to celebrate so I knew that he was in a really good mood.
He said that we'd be getting off the train in South Bend, because that was the closest stop to Kalamazoo and there was no point in going all the way to Chicago and then back again. And I knew that South Bend was pretty close to Granger, so I kind of got it in my mind that maybe I could fly back from there instead of riding in a car, as long as they were willing to take my things back to Kalamazoo for me. I thought that they probably would, and I almost asked, but I decided that maybe I'd wait until tomorrow and see how I felt then. It would be nice to get a long flight in, especially since I'd spent a lot of time riding on trains, but it might be rude to go my own way before our trip was over. Especially since I was sure they'd put a lot of effort into finding the right trains to ride and places to go, and there had been a couple of nights where Mister Salvatore hadn't gotten any sleep at all.
I should have read my Bible, but instead we all stayed in the Viewliner car watching the scenery until the sun went down, and then we went back to our rooms for the night.
Fun fact: my brother worked as a flight test engineer for Virgin Galactic, which is attempting to commercialize SpaceShipOne.
s.hswstatic.com/gif/spaceshipone-4.jpg
Damn shame, that.
Pity Silver missed the Pointy Planes. Hope she asks about them when she finds them in the book, although with their aspect ratios and positions theyre pretty easy to overlook as shadows or gaps between other craft, like MC Echers angels And Demons.
Im still confused about the wing unlock deployment thing, because the biggest problem with movable sections on aircraft, controls, is that they get vastly harder to move the faster you go, which is why small ones not only have wires and lever control yoke, but also asymetrical pivoting to use shear forces to enhance the torque available, and given the rotation was supposed to occur in freefall and vaccuum just confuses me totally. Im sorry for the thinking, but Im very simple minded and only know first year degree stuff from 30 years ago so forget and confuse so many things these days.
Maybe next time, Silver can stay at the Smithsonion Hotel and take a Week to explore the Museum fully, see if she can get minor, limited access to teh subteranean storage and research departments?
Try using your tongue, SG! That might fit better. I'm sure none of the museum staff will object.
I remember she watched Harry Potter; has she seen How to Train Your Dragon or any of the Spider-Man movies? We need SG watching more movies with flying scenes, preferably on the big screen. *smack*Sorry.
This line right here. Commit this whole sentence to memory, because I guarantee you you'll find a time to use it every single day.
And a Fluttershy to stare the predators into submission.
vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/6/62/Fluttershy_does_the_Stare_S4E07.png/revision/latest?cb=20131230170133
The one thing ive wondered while ive read this, is it harder to fly on earth? Silver never really seems to hover anywhere. Im sure she has to to fill the bird feeders but beyond that its either long flights or on the ground.
The World War Two memorial stands between the Washington monument and the reflecting pool. It isn't a gazebo. If you're referring to the smaller memorial that sits back in the trees along the reflecting pool, that gazebo is a memorial to World War One.
7708283
The one in the ash woods is a WWI monument?
farm2.static.flickr.com/1685/26327399585_66c492e918.jpg
7708048
Maybe she'll get to visit the USAF Museum before she goes home. Hmm, be interesting to see how she'd react to seeing and hearing the history of Bockscar.
7708291
Yes indeed. More specifically, it's for the solders from the District of Columbia who served in WWI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_War_Memorial
"Dear humanity, please fix your Celestia-damned
waffle makersgovernment."(In related news, I wonder if Trump wins in-universe and really does deport the ponies like that one guy at Walgreens wanted. Meghan is probably frantically filling out Equestrian immigration forms.)
((I mean she was already doing that, but she'd have another reason.))
...sonic rainboom?
7708214
That face is also the one she would make if she found out about the cages.
I wonder how Luna feels about that, it's not technically her moon but that ponies can't touch it.
"It is an outrage sister!"
"Well it's not like they can touch a piece of the sun either!"
7708091
I'm sure she wouldn't be the first visitor to lick the moon.
Aww... he's going to miss her when she goes home, isn't he?
I can't wait for the November 8 entry
7708371 A sequel is probably unwritable now. There's just no way to judge how Trump would react to an existing contact with an alien species. Arrogantly and selfishly, obviously, but the line between realism and slander is basically nonexistent.
I continue to be surprised that a visiting alien doesn't get more attention from the public. It's not as if they had the museum all to themselves. I would think that other visitors would ask permission to have their pictures taken with her to the point it becomes an imposition.
(Really stretch them out! Chic-ka)
7708499 Was going to comment on that paragraph as well.
Daddy Salvatore is best FBI agent. Seeing the development of his and the SG's character interaction has been wonderful so far.
7708337
Alrighty. I fixed the text. Thanks!
7708214 That line contains a typo. As chickens live in a coop. Rabbits live in a hutch.
7709017
And if it had four doors, it would be a chicken sedan.
Correction made; thank you.
7708455
Luna: "Theives!! Sister, please tell me our subjects dids't not taketh any part of our moon whilst we were banished!!"
Celestia: "Be a ease, sister. The only part of your moon in Equestria is still on your butt."
spent
7708371 Indeed. It seems she's not really into sports; otherwise, she might have heard of Rainbow Dash and how fast she is.
Heh. If they'd gone a little further south from the WWI memorial, they'd have hit the Pokémon Go horde that hangs out at the local hotspot- FDR/MLK Memorial.
I got to go to the Air and Space Museum once, but it was a long time ago and I don't remember much.
I'm way behind with this story, but I had to read the chapter where Silver Glow visits my city.
I'm a little disappointed she didn't comment more on the architecture and layout of the town, Washington is a very pretty city. It seems our pegasus friend doesn't have much of an appreciation for those sorts of things.
How does Mr Salvatore get eight major wars? I got twelve and I was ignoring stuff like the Boxer Rebellion and Philippine Insurgency. The only way I can figure it is if you ignore the Spanish American War and Mexican American War and lump Afghanistan and Iraq together.
Smithsonian has alot of great stuff to see.
7708019
From what I've read about it, the Concord wasn't exactly economically viable, but it sure would have been nice to get a chance to fly on one.
7708048
And you have to be careful to not allow something on the aircraft to move when it shouldn't; that's what brought down SpaceShipOne, IIRC.
7708091
If she turned her head sideways and put her mouth right up against the glass . . .
She's seen How to Train your Dragon, but not Spider-Man. Big screen's where it's at, because when her whole vision is filled with flying, her natural pegasus instincts take over.
7708214
For all the debate about how Fluttershy earns her money, pest control would be a pretty obvious choice. "Give me a hundred bits and I'll make sure that no mice eat your wheat."
7708238
Yes, it is. Her pegasus magic doesn't work as well on Earth as it would in Equestria, limiting her speed and endurance.
7708301
Unfortunately, there isn't enough summer break left for her to see that.
7708371
:rainbowalugh:
Yes, he will win in-universe, and it probably will motivate Meghan to work even harder on her application to go to Equestria. Especially if they don't get any television stations over there.
In the world of this story, I can't see Trump having any beef with the ponies.
But it's not a supersonic rainboom.
7708455
Maybe she'll bring down a piece of her moon that ponies can touch and admire. And lick.
I dunno, the cover over it makes me think it'd be a real challenge to lick it. On the other hand, you know some scientist has licked a moon rock for research.
7708499
Of course he is.
7708505
Yeah, that's going to be a fun one.
7708515
Being cynical, it would depend on how he thought it might profit him financially, and whether or not there was a popular resentment against them. If they liked staying in Trump hotels and drinking Trump-brand wine, he'd love them.
7708529
A place like DC, though, would probably actually be a hotspot for ponies with tourist visas, just as Canterlot would probably be popular with Humans visiting Equestria.
From a technical standpoint, that's part of the reason that this story takes place years after first contact, so people are at least somewhat accustomed to ponies.
7708561
7709084
So I know that there's at least one story where the Apollo astronauts encounter Luna on the moon, but that would be a hilarious twist on it.
7709169
Correction made; thank you!
7709343
She's probably heard of Rainbow Dash, fastest flier in the Wonderbolts. Maybe even seen her. But I don't think that she can fly supersonic; I think that the sonic rainboom is something else.
7709351
Silver could have gotten some new Pokemon and set them free for Caleb, Lindy, and Trinity. (well, if she had the app on her phone)
7710128
Yeah, me, too. It's probably been over 30 years . . . .
7718581
It is very pretty architecture, although I'm not sure that a pegasus would really appreciate that.
Revolutionary, 1812, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq/Afghanistan. Which I assume is the same count you did to get 8.
7724026
The only thing I remember, and that only vaguely, is the elephant.
7750166
I wouldn't say she's the fastest. Just rhe only one to manifest a rainbow on a sonic boom.
Sorry to burst your bubble. A sonic boom is what you get when an object surpasses the speed of sound.
9269885
The only one that we know of. As I recall, in the first episode with it, Fluttershy says that it’s a legend, and said legend might have started with its hoof in reality.
But it certainly doesn’t seem like a common pegasus ability, that’s for sure.
Also, if you haven’t seen it, here’s the epic Sonic Rainboom PMV:
This chapter really makes me want to go museum-hopping in DC again.
10931838
I kinda want to do it for the first time that I can remember. Last time we went, I was so little I don’t remember any of it except that one museum had an elephant.
I’ve been to DC twice since then; one time was just for a New Year’s party, and the other time we got yelled at for playing Red Rover on the Capital lawn . . . this was back before 9/11 when you could have fun like that.
According to my Grandpa, he once slept in the bushes around the White House. Can’t do that any more.
10932618
Air and Space, Natural History, and the Air/Space Udvar-Hazy center out at Dulles pretty much make a full trip all by themselves. The National Zoo is also excellent. It's really a worthwhile trip IMO.
I mean, I guess the White House was cool too, but the Zoo and Air and Space are what I remember.
The only ponies Trump is likely to have interacted with are wealthy tourists. Wealthy tourists and hotel chain owners get on like a house on fire, so I can't see him having much of a problem with them either.
You know what a Star War looks like!
This one is sorta weird. The descent stage is all that's left on the surface. The ascent stage of the LEM was used to return the astronauts to rendezvous with the CSM. It was then jettisoned. It may still be in orbit around the moon.
11343694
That's true! Real wars aren't that cool.
I did know that only some of it was left on the moon, I do wonder where the rest of it is now? Probably a waste of expensive telescope time to try and spot it (if it could even be spotted), but it would be interesting if some photo from a new lunar rover shows it zipping overhead. I wonder if anyone's even calculated where it might be--with the Chinese moon landings a few years ago and NASA's desire to put astronauts on the moon again, it'd be important to know if the ascent stage might suddenly show up and wreck your mission.
11343694
So I got curious about the ascent stage and found the paper that speculates it could still be in orbit.
Skimmed through it, and if the author is correct it might not even be that difficult or resource-intensive to find: "A rough analysis indicates that Eagle would be more than 125 km above the surface in about 25% of limb crossings. If one assumes radar is able to detect objects at this altitude, then four judiciously chosen 2-hour observation periods should provide sufficient coverage to possibly relocate one of the most important artifacts in the history of space exploration."