It was chaos as soon as I stepped off the plane into a world of lecherous politicians and thieves…I was in the District. Cab rides down side streets of the nation’s capital, walking through the streets of Georgetown barely managing to hold onto my last thread of sanity.

Being on the East Coast, where the genesis of our nation was formed. Vague memories of smoking a hookah pipe in a 24-hour Egyptian restaurant and eating in a greasy spoon at 6 a.m.

It was madness.

Some guy from some school in town for the journalism conference fell into the pool at the base of the hotel, idiots from Ball State, and the memory of a person wandering the halls of the Grand Hyatt with a bottle of Maker’s Mark and stoned look on his face.

I tried to warn them that there was bad craziness about, but I still watched them terrorize the hotel, screaming songs of another generation.

But I tried to remember that this was our time.

I chucked a cab to a club and realized that shirtless men and techno music have no business together…left feeling dirty.

Knowledge that I spent time in buildings older than almost any building in California.

Drinking shots at Bull Feathers in old-town Alexandria, Va. with Tevy, the bartender who is immortalized on the wall with a plaque for his 13 years of dedicated service to the art of bartending. Hard to believe it by looking at his capped canines and mohawk.

Hanging out in Adam’s Morgan at Madame’s Organ, drinking cold pints of Guinness, and listening to a heart-wrenching medley of “California Dreaming” and “Oye Como Va.”

Brick houses with no fences in the country and homeless in the doorways and on the streets in the city.

Cold, damp, dark streets walking in the rain back from the White House, the Mall, and the Washington Monument…almost getting hit by a bus while stranded in the middle of a crosswalk.

Too many minutes spent in the elevator staring at strangers from all over the country…knowing that I would never see them again.

Standing in the newsroom of the Washington Post in awe of its massiveness…looking for Woodward…and Bernstein…

Boarding my plane relieved that it was all over…

Staring out the window with the District over my right shoulder…

Glad to be coming back home to the Golden State.

Matt Wagar is a Journalism major and is news editor of the State Hornet.He can be reached by mail C/O the State Hornet- CSUS, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA, or by e-mail at [email protected].