I recently took a trip to the east coast. I'll get to the two young Saudi gentlemen in a minute. First let me give a few thoughts on a couple of the other places I visited.
I spent a few days in Portland, Maine. I stayed at a 19th-century inn on the edge of downtown. It was beautiful. I much prefer this kind of experience to the corporate boxes that pass for hotels for the middle class. I ate a lobster dinner at a crowded place down by the waterfront. I drank too much wine with and after dinner. It was a gorgeous, warm, late-summer night, but cloudy and threatening rain. I figured, "Hey, I'm walking through the downtown area. If I get tired, or lost, or wet, I can always hail a taxi." Here is my warning to tourists in Portland, Maine: It is illegal in Portland to hail a taxi. I did not know that. I got lost. I got tired. I got very, very wet. I stretched a 20-minute walk into almost two hours, getting back to the inn at about 2 in the morning - very, very, very angry at the 20-30 taxi drivers who ignored my efforts to flag them down.
It turns out that the taxi company owners have far more clout in Portland than do tourists. The company owners are afraid that if a taxi stops to pick up a tourist, without having gotten a call from the dispatcher, it is possible for the taxi driver to keep that fare off the books, and the company owner might not get her percentage. To maximize their profits, the companies have pushed through a law that prevents taxi drivers from picking up any fare that does not originate with a phone call to the dispatcher. All hail maximizing corporate profits! I guess I'm just glad it wasn't hailing that night I stumbled home in my wet ignorance.
By the way, if you're going to Portland, Maine, and you want to meet BillInPortlandME, it's much better to contact him ahead of time. It turns out he's not so well-known by that name in his hometown as one might expect.
I also spent a few days in Boston, which ranks up with my favorite cities in the country (along with San Francisco, Seattle and Madison). I had recently seen "The Town" and remembered being surprised when the movie started with a panoramic view of what I thought was the Washington monument. I remember thinking, "I would have thought a Ben Affleck movie would be based in Boston, rather than D.C." Then the movie was, indeed, based in Boston. So when I got to Beantown, one of my goals was to get on over to Charlestown and find this "Washington monument." I got off the orange line at the community college stop and headed toward the hill. Sure enough, there was the monolith directly ahead of me. I started climbing the hill and got over the top to Bunker Hill Street, but the monument was obscured from view by buildings. I was not in any hurry, so I decided to explore the neighborhood by following Bunker Hill from one end to the other. I headed north, went to the end, turned around and went to the other end. Then I headed back uphill, looking for the monument. Turns out it is the monument marking the Battle of Bunker Hill. It also turns out that it is not on Bunker Hill. In fact, the Battle of Bunker Hill was not fought on Bunker Hill, but on Breeds Hill. If I learned that in fifth grade, it's not something that stuck. I suppose that's my version of "six degrees of separation from Ben Affleck to trivia that I will never forget."
Ah, but on to those two young Saudi gentlemen. I was in D.C., walking up Delaware Avenue towards the Capitol. I figured I'd spend the afternoon lazily visiting the monuments on the Mall. From a few blocks away on Delaware Avenue, the Capitol dominates the scene. I heard two guys, who looked to be about 18-21, say, "Excuse me." I turned and they asked me, "Is that the White House?" I told them it was the Capitol. They asked how to get to the White House. I gave them directions, and we stopped and chatted a bit. They were tourists from Saudi Arabia, and Washington was their first stop in the U.S. Pleasant enough, polite, nice kids. I hope they enjoyed their stay in the U.S.
Anyway, later when I related this story to a friend, he was aghast and asked me, "Did it ever occur to you that they might be terrorists?" I laughed. If everybody in Saudi Arabia is a terrorist, you'd think they might get directions to their target, and know what it looks like. You want to know what I really thought when they got the White House mixed up with the Capitol and wanted directions to the White House? As they walked away, I thought, "Man, I don't know how big the palace is that your king lives in, but if you think the president of the United States lives in a building as big as the Capitol, you are going to be sorely disappointed when you get to the White House."