We’re back from the inauguration, which was a surprisingly easy affair. Ange & I got up at the crack of 7am, a blustery morning with temps in the mid-teens. We walked across the street to our nearby Metro station, where we quickly snagged a train with a few empty seats. It took about 40 minutes to get to Farragut North, where we disembarked and walked west a couple of blocks, then south on 19th street. After a 30 minute walk we reached the throngs on the Mall. We set up camp against barricades near the World War II memorial, where the crowd wasn’t too bad and where there were three jumbotrons re-broadcasting the Lincoln Memorial service from Sunday. So we waited 3 hours, sang along with Garth Brooks, bid the feeling in our toes farewell, and reflected upon the amusing signage of the ever-present nutjobs until the main event.
The service went down just like on TV, so you have seen that much already. The only bonus we got was the crowd response in surround sound, and the occasional slip-ups of the A/V people running the live feed, such as the occasional mic-ing of random people who were invariably carrying on conversations that had nothing to do with the festivities.
On leaving, we retraced our steps but just continued up 19th to Dupont, where we again got seats on the first train. We’ve had much worse train rides before and after hockey games, so either we were lucky or Metro was handling the situation well. We got back about 1:45pm.
Anyway, frozen toes notwithstanding, it was very cool to be at the epicenter, moreso since we had the day off anyway. Insert stuff about once in a lifetime historical moments here.