INAUGURATION!!!!!

BARACK OBAMA IS THE NEW PRESIDENT!!

I forgot my phone in the car so I couldn't take pictures or send updates throughout the day, which was extremely disappointing, but it allowed me to pay more attention to taking in everything that was going on around me. We got a late start from our hotel, leaving at 4:45am instead of 4:00am, but we made it to the Metro stop and headed downtown. I forget exactly what time we got off the Metro, but I do remember that the stop we needed was closed and we had to ride on to the next one, which created a big mess of people not really knowing where to go and a bunch of extra walking. We finally made it to our ticket gate (Silver tickets, standing room on the Mall) at about 7:05am.

While standing in line, we saw recently-retired Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy about ten feet away. At 8:00am they opened the gate and the crowd surged forward. About 15 minutes later, as we were actually nearing the first gate before security, Tony Dungy moved by us going perpendicular to the crowd movement and asked me if he could squeeze by! Of course I backed off as much as I could and he brushed by me. We finally squeezed through the gate and then had to wait something like another hour before we made it to the security checkpoint, which wasn't exactly a model of great security. Numerous people made it into the Silver section without actually having tickets. Way to go DC! But with that many people crowding in there, things went off without very many noticeable hitches. I'd like to say I was upset that people got into the ticketed area without tickets, but honestly, we were all more or less family today; and for standing room only three blocks away, I'm surprised they even issued tickets. I am glad I have my ticket though. Only about 28,000 of these babies exist, and I've got mine.

The event kicked off at 10:30am with some choir performances. The jumbotron pointed out numerous celebrities that were lucky enough to get chairs to sit in for the event. Among them were Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman, Wycliffe Jean, Beyonce, Oprah, and Magic Johnson. Muhammad Ali also was here for this historic event. Then the Governors came, followed by the Senators, and the familes of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and the ex-vice Presidents, and the ex-Presidents. Then out came Joe Biden to enormous cheers, and then the man everyone came to see, Barack Obama. All throughout the ceremony and the hours of waiting leading up to it, chants of "OBAMA!" rang through the crowd. Interspersed among these chants, the crowd sang "Na Na Na NA! Na Na Na NA! He-ey hey! GOODBYE!" to President Bush. As we got closer and closer to the ceremony, we got a virtual countdown of George Bush's time left in office from people in the crowd all around us.

Finally the ceremony kicked off with Aretha Franklin serenading us with "My Country 'Tis of Thee." She sported some pretty amazing headgear. Oh and Rick Warren did his convocation thing somewhere in there. And soon enough, Joe Biden was sworn in as the next Vice President of the United States of America. Then there was a moving John Williams piece performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Gabriela Montero, and Anthony McGill. And then it was game time.

Very few words spoken in my presence have ever made me smile as big of a smile and cheer as loud of a cheer as what I heard next. "I, Barack Hussein Obama..." The crowd went nuts! Mr. Obama was now the 44th President of the United States of America! At this point there was a poetry reading and they played the Star Spangled Banner. We began making our way toward the exit with the rest of the crowd, but it was jammed up. We made it about 20 feet in 20 minutes. At this point we, the crowd, took it upon ourselves to get out of there and more or less tore down a fence and climbed through it and through some trees and over some boulders and around a pond and finally made it out onto the street.

The crowds were so intense. Chaos ensued. Some people were trying to go one direction, others in every other direction. We fought our way to a Metro stop where the crowd had gotten backed up and some part time military folk were doing their best to maintain order and keep the kids in the crowd from being trampled. After about twenty minutes of standing in line, a short time by the rest of the day's standards, we made it to the escalator. We managed to pile into the first train that was waiting at the station and took off. After a fairly easy transfer we made it to Union Station at about 2:00pm where the crowds were again enormous. People were everywhere. We made a mad dash to find some food since we hadn't eaten since about 7:00 or 8:00pm the night before. We managaed to scrape up some sandwiches and sat down for about 20 minutes. Then we got kicked out of Union Station. Apparently it got too crowded so they kicked everyone out and even shut down the Metro stop there. So we were forced to walk about 10 blocks to another Metro stop, where we got on and made it back to the car about an hour and a half later.

I'd like to say I will never put myself into a crowd situation like this again, but who am I kidding? I live for this stuff. Yes, most of the day was miserable, but I was here, in Washington DC, on January 20th, 2009, when Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th President and 1st African American President. And getting to hear him take the oath of office and give his inaugural address in person and see from a distance the little speck that was him is an experience I will never forget.