It's inauguration day, day of the big show. I'm near the end of it now, looking back and pretty tired. It's been, as I anticipated in my first blog a week ago, an Experience. Make that, a collection of experiences -- some really exhilarating (as expected) and some really unfortunate (as feared possible) but collectively, an Experience.
I'm breaking it up into a series of posts. Read the next few from this post up, to get the chronological tale.
The alarm goes off at 3 a.m. because we want to catch one of the first metro trains going into DC at 4 a.m. The station is already loading up but we're ahead of the big crush. We arrive in downtown and speedwalk to the entrance gate for the purple standing area tickets (won with luck and great persistence in appealing to our new congressman Walt Minnick, beginning the day after the election). The tickets are to a great area of the capital mall; just behind the seated guests, relatively close up to the capitol steps and inaugural dais considering the mass of people will be behind us in the capital mall stretching almost two miles back.
We get to the purple gate about 5 a.m. There's an orderly line 3-4 people wide begun at the gate, which is to open at 8 a.m. We're about 500 people back -- a good spot, since our "purple" area can probably handle 10,000.
It's real cold but we've dressed heavily. Despite the cold and the hour, it's a party mood with our neighbors in line. We're the early arrivers, going to see the new president sworn in (that us four in the picture at top early in our Line Experience, Chris, Sandy, Nate, Autry). The Jewish kid from Ohio in line in front of us sells an extra copy of his "My President is Black" shirt to the black gal from Georgia in front of him. It's a party. It's darn cold.
(Continues next post above ...)
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