Roughly two million people showed up to see the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday, and there are almost as many stories out there about that. My own is of an easy and wonderful day – we biked down around 8:30, huddled like penguins trying to stay warm for a few hours, experienced the joy of turning the page on a dark chapter of American history with a couple million people, and rode home after.  Pictures here, if you like.
I also want to share the story of a friend who traveled in from out in Loudoun County, Virginia. While she had to go through a lot more trouble than me to join everyone on the Mall, it sounds like she had a fantastic time, too:
The MARC train experience was excellent-  we left my house at 7:30 and drove to the bridge over the Potomac at Point of Rocks station- parked the car in a near empty parking lot and got aboard the train. While on the train waiting on the car with the bathroom, I met people from Ohio, Washington state, Massachusetts, and Atlanta. Everyone was so excited. There was a man with his 10 month old daughter heading down.  I hope she was warm enough. We met a man, Doug from Frederick, traveling alone and George and I adopted him to walk with us to the Mall.
We got into Union Station right before 10 AM and it took us 1.5 hours to walk (slog) over and finally find a place to enter the Mall at the Washington Monument. We had to navigate the street closings near the Capital and try to get from D and other streets back to Independence Ave. I have never seen so many people in my life on the streets to “Mecca” but everyone was very polite and cooperative.  We lost our new friend Doug in the massive crowd. I held George’s hand the whole time so we would not be separated, it was that crowded around us.
On the way over, we saw the lines of people with orange tickets snaking for blocks and wondered how many of them actually got through in time to get on the Mall.  I heard stories about many blue and purple ticket holders not getting in. Honestly, I never thought we would make it in time but we finally got on the Mall at 11:30. There were still so many people on the street trying to get to the Mall on time. Just amazing.
The jumbotron was not that close, but we could still see it and just decided to stay put as the ceremony was about to start. When Bush was shown on the screen there was massive booing all over the Mall – that many people booing was truly amazing. (I was one of them). There were some kids by us who got separated from their dad and a woman was going to help take them to the “lost and found”. There was no clapping nor booing for Rick Warren where I was – just indifference.
I loved being on the Mall when Obama was sworn in. I will never forget it and the crowd going nuts. Even with all those people, It was very quiet during his speech – all listened intently.  After his speech many people left. The wind started to pick up after that and it got really cold by the Washington Monument. Massive amounts of newspaper pieces were blowing everywhere. (Obama should have ordered everyone on the Mall to pick up the trash next to them as part of their first assignment to support the country)  We had no problem finding an empty porta-potty. Due to the fact it took us so long to get to the Mall, we decided to start heading back to Union Station even though our train was not until 5:30.
Again the crowds heading back were just astonishing. The line to get to the L’Enfant Metro station was blocks long. There were an amazing amount of lost gloves and scarves on the street along with a child’s boot that must have slipped off. Parked tour buses lined the streets everywhere.  Pedestrians ruled - Metro buses trying to get around were trapped at intersections with no cops to help them. What was most inspiring to me were all the elderly black women who were bound to make it to the Mall to witness history and now were slowly heading back.  We saw some of them sitting on small chairs in the 395 tunnels taking a rest before moving on again.
All was well until we got to Union Station. What is it with Union Station and security? We thought we would get something warm to drink and sit in there before we got our train. Come to find out all shops had been shut down there. Earlier on the morning train we had been told there would be restricted access to the station in the afternoon (I guess due to a ball being held there in the evening and security.) It was very confusing where to go to get in. We were sent around to an entry along the left side of the station which was fenced off. Either they were sweeping the station or there was a security issue, because suddenly all people were being sent back out of the station and I think they closed the Metro for a time. We were not allowed to enter and many people were backed up all over the streets, some with rolling luggage, who wanted to get in and not miss their train. So masses were sent out into a crowd who all wanted to go in.
No one was saying what was going on and people were getting angry. There was a policeman on top of a porta-potty gesturing to people , but you could not hear him. It was comical.  All it would have taken was a person in charge with a bull horn to say we have temporarily closed the station and just hold on a few more minutes, but no – nothing. Finally, they were allowing people in and it got scary when all throngs of people behind us were pushing forward. I was pushed into an orange barrel that I was lucky to get around.  Here is a quote from the Post and I think this happened when we were there. “”Firefighters were called for people who had fallen down among a crush of people at a security checkpoint near Union Station. “   There was no excuse for that. Again, a person with a bullhorn would have calmed the crowd and explained the situation.
Once we got inside the fence, there were about 15 Homeland security guys on each side of us and we had to run the gauntlet to get into the station. I wished I had taken pictures of that. No one checked our bags. Once inside there were great signs leading us to the MARC train and we were able to actually get on an earlier train and get home and see some of the parade. Other than almost getting trampled, it was a great day!!!!  MARC train did an excellent job!!!!!
You know things are special when you can get trampled and still call it a great day.
Related: Pictures from the We Are One concert, note about Pete Seeger’s This Land performance, and new link to the Seeger video in comments here.
