And they’re off!  Today RVCC WWiW participants carried out not one, not two…but 33 meetings, primarily with staffers from the House of Representatives, but also a handful of Senate offices, the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committees, the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, the Office of Environmental Markets and interest groups.

Some of us got to meander between buildings and enjoy the gorgeous 70 degree weather and beautiful blue sky (even swamps have their days), but most were frantically dashing back and forth between the Rayburn, Cannon, and Longworth House Office buildings.

Those of us lucky to have 3 minutes to get from one end of the complex to the other got to experience the excitement of getting lost in the endless maze of hallways, entrances, exits, and storage rooms of the underground tunnels below the buildings. Maia keeps telling me that they’re safe and easy to figure out once you’ve walked them a couple times, but she lived here for years and I’m pretty sure that I saw a Morlock hiding in the garbage shoot.

Some of us had lunch with the policy folk in the Congressional cafeteria, some were glad to have a break in the botanical gardens, and hopefully not too many of us ended up making the mistake of taking the red line train two stops in the wrong direction and finally figuring out that “they’re aren’t as many people texting on their Blackberries out this way.”