Author: Vic Socotra

By Firelight

It was a red-letter weekend, featuring just about everything. Friday and Saturday were sort of like old times, approaching the bacchanalia of the Super Bowl, and Friday night’s excesses morphed into the grand adventure in the District on a chilly but brilliant Saturday, and a return to the scene of the crime at the Front […]

Odds and Ends

(The fabled Cardinal Stone of the North. Near 1850 East-West Highway, Washington, DC. Navigation by Jon-Without, transport and driving by Vic). Let’s see: I got a call about a birthday party at the Front Page and decided to stay in Arlington for the occasion. I get the feeling I might not be here that much […]

Anacostia Dreaming

(Scenic View of the 11th Street Bridge heading into Anacostia in SE Washington DC. The new lanes hooking the highway to Maryland Rt 295 might have been the only shovel-ready construction project funded in the 2008 stimulus bill). I had occasion to be at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB) yesterday. It was sort of an odd […]

It’s What’s For Dinner

It is a rainy winter day in Washington, and gray and the piles of snow that remain are dirty and weeping. Having been down the rapids of all the email and websites since rising, I am pretty sure I am not going to be able to make it through the rest of this extraordinary silly […]

Groundhog Day

(The late crooner Sonny Bono, right, and the sultry young Cher from a screenshot of their monster hit “I Got You Babe). Punxatawny Phil emerged from his burrow on Gobbler’s Knob and saw no shadow. The burly man in the top hat held the hefty rodent aloft, and proclaimed loudly: “There is no shadow to […]

Two, If By Sea

(The view from the Gaylord Hotel at National Harbor outlining our course north under the new Wilson Bridge). Argo drove off that Spring morning and we both felt a sense of frustration. I motored back to the freeway and took the exit to National Harbor. The Potomac is one big ass river as it opens […]

One, If By Land

It was a little more than two years ago that Argo challenged me to get off my ass and finish the Quest for the Stones. He is a go-getter, let me tell you, and lean and lithe and athletic, which is the last thing I was in 2013. Argo tapped into the increasing obsession about […]

The Impound Lot

(Editor’s Note: this is out of sequence due to a temporal warp that occurred with a solar flare yesterday. It is an account of the second try- the first one with a full platoon- to find SE8. You can call me a Stones pussy if you want, but the first time I tried to find […]

Hole in the Fence

18 September 2009 (The Search Party: Hector, The Blonde and the Colonel). I am still crackling with adrenaline, and this part is neither embroidered nor tall tale. It does start out like a Sea Story, though, which is to say not “Once upon a time,” but “This is a no-shitter.” The names, of course, have […]

Saboteurs

(Mug shots of the eight German Saboteurs, six of whom were executed in the DC jail and whose remains are in unmarked graves in the Potter’s Field near Boundary Stone SE8). It was a relief to pull off the smooth pavement of Virginias Route 3, after passing the big bunker at Mount Pony, where the […]