D.C. Police Let Man Play Pond Hockey on the Capitol Reflecting Pool at Sunrise
Two days ago, a Reddit user posted the above stunning photo of the frozen Capitol Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C. at sunrise, just after he had skated and stick-handled on it. Shocked -- like many Redditors -- that someone can skate on the Reflecting Pool and not immediately get hit by a drone, I reached out to Keegan Bursaw, our intrepid pond hockey patriot, for the full story:
So basic rundown: I biked down from my house at around 6:15 a.m. or so. I wasn't sure how long I'd get to be on the ice before Capitol Hill Police came and chased me off. Quickly threw my bike down, put my skates on, and looked around one more time before standing up and gliding out. I had been skating on the ice for a few minutes when I first noticed the parked car near the Capitol flashing it's headlights every so often. The front of the car was facing me (at least 400-500 feet away, up the slope of Capitol Hill). I'm around the Capitol a lot, and had never seen that before, so I figured it had to be directed at me.
The sun started to rise after 5-10 minutes or so and the area got noticeably brighter. A few Hill Police cars were in the area, but hadn't really done anything at this point. Eventually, one of them rolled down 3rd St. S.W. and kept going without slowing down. I remember feeling triumphant, sort of a sense of "Yes! They didn't kick me off." A few minutes later, he slowly cruised down Maryland Ave. S.W. and with the loudspeaker and politely asked me to get off the ice now so others wouldn't get the same idea. I gave them a wave, and did one more little loop and skated back to my bike and bag.
The cop car drove off once I sat down and started taking my skates off. Once I had packed up everything, I biked up below the Capitol where the car with the flashing headlights was parked, and waved at the 2 officers who were standing nearby with coffee. They waved back right away, and it was obvious that they had been watching me skate and stickhandle around on the pool.
Keegan had a GoPro camera running while he dangled around the seat of power, and was nice enough to upload the video for us. It's a beautiful, disorienting view of the sun rising behind the Capitol, from the perspective of a puck:
