Mike and the Senate Tubes

This here is my bff Mike, we were inseparable all the way from Kindergarten to BYU. Much to our good fortune, he was spending the semester of our Washington DC trip hard at work as an intern in Utah Senator Orrin Hatch's office in the Hart Senate Office Building. Part of his many duties as a Senatorial intern was to conduct tours of the Capitol Building for curious tourists such as ourselves. I knew Mike would give us a great tour, but I had no idea it would be as unforgettable as it was. Surely the building itself is quite the canvas on which to paint a good tour, but Mike the artist made the tour a true work of art. Man, that's really poetic! A thousand thanks go to Mike for his tour! If you would like to learn more about the life and times of Mike, there's a link to his blog, The Foggy Bottom Tribune, over yonder to your right (my left).

I've got a bunch to say about the innards of the Capitol building, but I'll save that for the next posting. I do, however, feel that I must tell you about the secret tunnels that link the Senate Office Buildings (SOB's hee hee hee) to the Capitol building. Alright, so they're not so secret, but I had never heard of them. The United States Capitol Subway System was built way back in 1909 to link the Russell SOB to the Capitol, and has been added upon over the years. Currently the tunnels link all three SOBs and the House of Reps offices as well. Our little entourage got to take a ride in the little cars all the way from the Hart building and back, and I gotta tell ya, it was a ball!! The cars are so cute and little, and decked out in Senate logos. It was our electromagnetic chariot to the great collosieum. See the picture of Mike up above, which was taken in one of the cars. Mike told us about all the cool senator people he'd seen in these tunnels, and we immediately wished that we could be the little guy that runs the trains back and forth. Whodda thunk? Senate tubes. Pretty cool stuff.