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Me: How's Max doing on the trip?

Chris: He loves it. He thinks he's spraying the whole U.S., marking his territory.

rofl!!

I don't know how many more adventures I can handle

Today I witnessed a car chase that ended in a gun fight.

Yes, it's true. Pang (one of the LOC interns) and I decided to go to dinner together in Chinatown. We decided to walk. We chose our path according to which lights were green. And all these coincidences combined to lead us straight into the middle of a car chase. We were walking down (up?) Constitution Ave, crossing New Jersey when I realized that all the sirens I'd been hearing were converging on us. That might seem strange that I wasn't alarmed at that point, but honestly I hear sirens every day and even more so on The Hill. I looked down New Jersey and saw a white car coming towards us with its front bashed in followed closely by two police cars. Pang and I both realized it was a chase at the same time and we both started running across the street. Once on the other side, we sort of stopped. I don't know what Pang was thinking, but I was thinking "There is no safe place for me to go!" The whole area was grass, trees and wide sidewalks. Potentially, the run away car could have started driving anywhere. In just the brief moment it took for those thoughts to cross through my mind, the driver of the car fired a shot at the officers. They returned fire, squeezing off five or six shots. Of course, Pang and I didn't see that part because at the first sound of gun shot we were trying to find a place to hide. First we went behind a sign which was ridiculous but it was the closest thing around. Then Pang spotted a big metal box and we went behind that. After a few moments of silence, I suggested we just try and get the heck out of there and started to try and walk away (I wasn't thinking straight, obviously). Suddenly we heard a voice behind us say "Girls, come over here!" We turned around to see the top of a college-aged boy's head sticking out from behind a car. Now that I think about it, it was both brave and kind of him to risk his head like that to draw our attention. We ran over and joined three other people who were hiding behind the car.

By this time, the area is just filling up with police cars. We sat there for quite a while longer and several officers asked us if we were ok, if any of us had been harmed or not, and we'd seen anything. The weirdest part is that one of the ladies kept saying "They were shooting at me!" At first we all thought she was joking and several of the officers smiled good-naturedly in response. But she just kept saying it and the she pointed to some dirt on her arm and said "Look! They got me! I've been hit!!" The officer leaned over and brushed it off, assuring her it was nothing. Then she took a binder out of her bag and began looking for a paper with a red mark on it given to her by white people who said they were going to kill her. She also mentioned Obama stealing something and how that was tied to her imminent assassination. As if the whole incident wasn't bizarre enough, suddenly we were crouched behind a car with a crazy woman.

The police asked us to fill out a witness report, just stating what we'd seen. As none of us had seen the actual shooting, I'm not sure how helpful that will be, but it's nice to think we might be of some help. From what the officer told us, the man was parked outside Union Station when a police officer realized he had a fake temporary tag on his car. The officer-on a bike-attempted to pull him over when he took off. I read in a news article that the man hit two officers with his car. I also read (and the officer at the scene confirmed this as well) that the man took the first shot at the officers. I heard one of the police scanners say that the guy had hit two girls with his car at Union Station, but when he noticed that I was listening to his scanner, he turned it down so I don't know much more about that.

Pang and Stephen (the brave soul who beckoned us to the car) didn't seem ready to leave the scene. I, on the other hand, was itching to get away. I stayed though and I'm glad I did. I learned some very interesting facts. For example, the police officer said that he has a friend who works in the Secret Service. He told the officer that when Bush was president he received about 10 death threats per day. Obama receives about 40. That really surprised me. Of course, most of them are racially motivated, which is pathetic.

You know me, ( I had to take pictures )