New old home

It has not been hard to re-adapt.  I filled up my bike tires, tightened up all the bolts and I was good to go.  Yesterday, I went down to State Department to check in. I also talked to my predecessor about my Smithsonian job that I will start in September.  It will be fun.

The biking is a little harder because I am doing the round trip of 34 miles.  When I get to my actual work, I will do as I did before, i.e. ride to work in the morning and take the Metro back in the evening.  It is mostly downhill on the way to Washington.  Coming back is not as much fun.  It gets a little worse now, since they have closed the gate at Fort Meyer and I have to go all the way around.
The weather has been very good, not too hot.  It seems like summer is cooler. I was thinking about whether this was really the weather or if it was just my perception, having spent some time in Iraq and Brazil, where it gets hot.  I think that might be true, but it is also true that summers have been a little cooler.  We bought the house in 1997.  It turns out that our first full summer in Washington, summer of 1998, was especially hot. That was my “base year” and since then conditions have been better, so it feels better to me.
Today I went over to the Nature Conservancy.  I have been a donor for more than twenty-five years and the person in charge of donor relations invited me over for coffee.  TNC is my favorite environmental organization because they are actually involved with improving nature instead of just complaining.   I hope to visit the TNC tallgrass prairie station in Oklahoma during out upcoming trip across the U.S.  The donor relations woman told me that she would make some calls and we could get a guided tour.  Hope it works out, so I can learn more.
The top picture is my new workplace.  Not bad.  I am way underground, but still in a nice place.  The middle picture is my bike trail and on the bottom is the Nature Conservancy headquarters.