Inauguration

OK, this has absolutely nothing to do with our renovation, but I thought some people might be interested in hearing about our inauguration experience, and I figured I might as well post it here...

My sister, Sonia, informed me at Christmas that a friend had managed to get inauguration tickets from her Congressperson so the two of them were planning to fly out and stay with us for several days in late January. Unfortunately, a few days beforehand, her friend's grandfather fell ill and she had to fly to Arizona instead. She called her Congressperson's office to see if Sonia could pick up her tickets, but they said no. Sonia decided to come anyway and just go with Josh and me (who didn't have tickets.)

Monday (Jan 19th) night we took the Metro to Josh's parents' house near Eastern Market, which is just a few blocks east of the Capitol building. The Metro was packed with people, as were all the bars and restaurants around Eastern Market. We had dinner with Josh's parents and then went to nearby tavern for dessert and warm coffee drinks. We didn't sleep much that night. We heard sirens, buses, revelers, and general traffic all night long -- and the coffee drinks probably didn't help much either.

We got up at 7 am the next day (Jan 20) and wolfed down some toast and a few sips of OJ (we didn't want to deal with port-a-johns in below-freezing weather) before bundling up and heading out on foot for the Mall. It was very cold outside (high: 31, low: 19), and the wind chill made it feel even colder. Because the parade route ran along the north side of the Mall, those who wanted to attend the inauguration ceremony were told to approach the Mall from the south. By the time we got near the Capitol, the streets were so crammed with people we could barely move. There were huge lines for the ticketed areas, and the streets were lined with buses, volunteers, vendors of Obama memorabilia, and law enforcement/military types. We kept walking and walking in search of an actual entrance onto the Mall, but it seemed to be completely fenced off. Here was the scene by the USDA building around 9 am:

It turned out they had already closed off the entire Mall by that point because there were so many people. We ended up walking all the way to the Washington Monument, which is about 1.2 miles from the Capitol, and made our way through the throngs to a spot on the hill right near the base of the monument. Here are Josh & I waiting for the ceremony to begin with part of the Monument in the background (Josh is wearing his "I'm gay for Obama" button):

To get a better sense of where we were, take a look at the second photo on this page. It was taken from the top of the Washington Monument, directly above us. We had a decent view of the Capitol as well as one of the many Jumbotron screens set up along the Mall, so although we were too far away to see anything in person, we could watch the ceremony on the big screen. Here's our view of the actual swearing-in:

It was so cold that we had to march in place for the 3 hours we were standing there in order to keep warm. My hands and feet actually hurt from the cold! Many people around us were doing the same thing, so imagine this whole sea of hoods and hats bobbing up and down. Even though we were cold, tired, and over a mile away, it was still an incredible experience to be there in person with 2 million other extremely excited people. The crowd went wild whenever Obama was on the screen, and the sight of Dick Cheney in his wheelchair was greeted with the sound of hundreds of thousands of people booing. I almost felt sorry for him...

After the ceremony was over, we realized there were nearly 2 million people between us and Josh's parents' house, so we turned around and headed in the opposite direction towards our house in Arlington. It was surreal walking down major DC streets with no cars but hordes of people. It felt like a scene from some epic, post-apocalyptic movie. We crossed the Potomac (which was frozen over) by walking right down the middle of the Roosevelt Bridge:
We stopped at a pizza place in Rosslyn around 2:30 for a much-needed lunch, rest, and bathroom break and finally made it home around 4. All told, I think we walked about 7 miles, not including the 3 hours of marching in place...

Before Sonia flew back to California, we paid a visit to the National Portrait Gallery to see the original Shepard Fairey "HOPE" poster, which is actually a collage of different types of colored and patterned paper. Very cool: