President Barack Obama's Inauguration
Barack Obama....Progress
I have been planning on going to the inauguration for a long time. I was so happy to see Bush go, not like he could run again for a third term. But so glad he was going, that McCain didn’t win (nice guy and all, I just don’t want him as my president), and Obama wins the office. Being only 25 miles from downtown it also makes sense to attend as well. If I didn’t live I would not be going, but it is one of the nice things about living so close.
I have gone once before, for Clinton’s second term my Dad and I decided to go on a whim. We had never been to one before and couldn’t figure out why we had not gone to one before. It is an amazing thing when you think about it. Every four years our country elects a new leader of our nation, and on the 20th of January at noon according to the rules in the Constitution, there is a peaceful transfer of power to a new administration. There is no violence, no gun shots, no lawyers, just a hand shake and an oath of office.
This time around it would be a little more special than usual. Not only because the country was tired of the last four years under Bush and wanted to celebrate the new direction. He is also the first black man to be elected as president of the United States. I won’t go into deal because we all know the history, but this country has come a long way to elect a black man as president. GO AMERICA!
As excited as I was I could barely sleep the night before, eventually I did get to bed, it was going to be a long day. All bridges from Virginia into DC were closed except for pedestrian traffic. Metro would be smashed unlike any day in history. Add in 1.5 to 2 millions people on a cold ass day and like I said it was going to be a long day. It started at 8am when I left my Dad’s house in Springfield with Pat and Tracy. Our plan was to have my Dad drop us off at the Springfield Metro, take it all the way into the city, get off at L’Enfant Plaza, and walk to the Mall only a few short blocks away. All this with plenty of time before the swearing in at noon.
view of the crowd
Unfortunately the plan was not as smooth as we would have liked. Tens of thousands, no hundreds of thousands of people decided our plan was a good one and copied it. Once we arrived at the Metro station we could see a line of people already forming across the bridge leading from the parking garage to the station. Not good. Once on the platform the line doubled backed onto itself, so we got into line and waited like everyone else. The vibe was good so standing in line didn’t seem that bad. Until the double backed line collapsed and we went from the middle of the line to the end, erasing about 45 minutes of waiting. Just getting on the train was a fiasco. Some how Pat got away from Tracy and I and we lost her in the crowd. When we get to the platform still no Pat, but we found an empty train. So I quickly called Pat and found she was on the train already. She had the same idea as us, get on the train, time is wasting and we needed to get downtown.
The train took longer then we hoped for, just over 1.5 hours to get to L’Enfant Plaza. When we reached the elevators the light was a god send, we couldn’t spend any more time in that damn tunnel. It was about 11 o’clock and we still had not made it to the mall. Time to get a move on!
Tracy and Pat
We quickly walked down to the Mall and found a place we could enter at. Using Pat’s ninja like skill we worked out way near the center of the crowd for a better view of the Capital building and closer look at the jumbotron. We couldn’t actually see what was going on at the Capitol, we made it to about the middle of the Mall. Even with the bitter cold the crowd was electric, it warmed us heart and soul. Everyone was excited to watch history unfold this chilly afternoon. Just after twelve Bidden was sworn in and the man of the hour was next. After a quick ceremony he gave a 20 minute speech that was really good. It talked about the road ahead and what was going to be different from the last four years.
After his speech we walked around the Mall and had some lunch, no need to leave after spending all this time getting here. We gave the crowds a chance to die down before we headed back to Metro ourselves. We were hoping things would go smoother, but we were not holding out much hope. To help the situation we changed our strategy a little. We were still getting on at L’Enfant but this time we were going to take the yellow line straight into Virginia and get off at Eisenhower Avenue. This would be more direct and hopefully save more time. Bingo we have a winner. The way home was a normal trip once we got into the station. Ten minutes after that my Dad picked us up and we were on our way to a nice warm house.
This was truly an amazing day, glad I could be apart of it.
Goodbye Mr. Bush!
