My Inauguration Adventure

The Capitol
January 20, 2009

I could wax lyrical about the historical nature of last Tuesday’s inauguration. In fact, I was my university’s guest blogger this week, writing about history, politics, and civil rights. It was a positive blog entry. I didn’t bitch and moan about the fact that I couldn’t see squat during the actual event. I didn’t mention the chick who said I was rude when I pointed out the fact that I simply could not move another inch because there was no place to go. I didn’t talk about the lines, the cold, the sore feet, the crabby husband.

I was a good little professor.

If you want the uber-positive version of my inauguration adventure, email me for the link. But, if you want the funny, tragic, annoyed, amused, amazed, and stunned version, keep reading. You’re in the right place.

Our trip to The Mall had not been an easy one. The Coach was out of town when our congressman’s office left a message on our voice mail, informing him that we had been awarded tickets to the inauguration. If you are one of my (former) students, then you know that I am not good with voice mail. I am a bit scatterbrained; I never remember to check the voice mail system at work, much less at home. So, when The Coach finally checked the messages, we had missed the deadline for confirming our interest in getting the tickets.

“Well, that’s that,” I said to my husband. “We really screwed up. There’s no way that Congressman X’s office still has those tickets.”

I have never been much of an optimist.

Yet, fortune shined on my husband that day. The congressman’s office still had our tickets, and yes, we could still pick them up in D.C. the day before the inauguration. I’m pretty sure that the congressman has earned The Coach’s vote in the next election, simply because he kept The Coach out of the doghouse.

Gettysburg National Military Park
I wonder how many idiots fell off this wall?

So last Saturday, we packed our car, dropped the keys off with our cat sitter, and left our big dog at the kennel. We were 15 miles down the road when we had to turn around; we had left the new car insurance cards sitting on the desk in our breakfast nook. Thanks to the weather, a procrastinating husband, and a scary drunk who nearly ran us off the road in West Virginia, we didn’t make it to Maryland until Sunday morning.

We spent that first day hanging out with our friends B. & K. who live in the shadow of Camp David. B. reminded us of this fact when he was giving us directions for a shortcut through the Catoctin Mountain Park. “Cell phones don’t work well in the park,” he said. “I’m convinced that the government blocks our calls because Camp David is up there.”

He might be right. We lost our signal about 10 minutes after he told us this tidy little factoid.

After getting our little dog settled into B.’s townhouse, we loaded up our car and went to Gettysburg to eat at the Springhouse Tavern at the Dobbin House. This is a ritual for us: every time we visit B., we go to the Dobbin House. The tavern is really quite cute, with fireplaces and candles burning, and springs running though. The food’s pretty good too – I had the French onion soup and a spinach salad (with bacon dressing!) and shared a cheese plate with The Coach.

In many ways, Gettysburg was a good place to start our inaugural vacation. After all, it was the turning point of the Civil War. I’m not going to dwell on that, because many other people have talked about the links between Obama and Lincoln (and who wants to be redundant?). I will, however, tell you that the National Park has built a new visitors’ center (pretty), moved the cyclorama (amazing), and added a fancy restaurant (closed). I’ll also tell you that The Coach fell asleep during the video.

Oh well, at least he didn’t snore.

He did, however, buy a die-cast model of an airplane at a little shop down the road from the Park. Yeah, when The Coach and B get together, there’s no stopping them. Boys and their toys collectibles.

Capitol South Metro Station
The day before the main event

Monday morning, we had to go into the Washington, D.C., to pick up our tickets for the inauguration at the Rayburn office building. We got off to a late start: four adults sharing one shower, two dogs to be pushed back into a house, and one car insurance payment to be made. Finally, we were on our way to the Shady Grove Metro Station, where The Coach and B. fought the ticket machines. Yeah, mistakes were made, information booths were visited, new tickets were issued. We didn’t make it into D.C. until almost 11:30 a.m. where we encountered a long, long line at the Rayburn building. Oh well, we made the most of it, chatting with the people around us and giving an interview to some graduate students from Texas who were making a documentary. The holdup was due to the metal detectors and security guards; I mean, once we were in the building, we scored our tickets within five minutes. We even had time to pee in the fancy bathrooms.

Yes, I have peed in the Halls of Power!

The rest of Monday was rather lazy. We went over to GWU to eat pizza at a restaurant B. suggested, and then we spent the rest of our afternoon wandering pushing through the crowds at the International Spy Museum ($18/each). Neat-o museum – at least I think it was a neat-o museum because I had problems getting to see much of anything in the first two exhibits because too many people were in the building. If I can bring myself to cough up another $32, I might go back in the future to finish looking at all the things I missed. {Sigh}

Pouring out of the Metro Station
January 20, 2009

Now, I am not a morning person, so you’ll understand that the first few hours of Tuesday were not very pleasant for me. The Coach woke me up at 4:30 a.m. (harsh!) so that we could get to the Metro Station in time to find parking. We loaded up the care package from B. (which, incidentally, included recalled cheese and peanut butter crackers!), grabbed a couple bottles of water, and left our little dog whimper at the door (B. said he went on for close to 30 minutes – oops). By the time we got to Shady Grove, the first lot was starting to fill up. We scored a spot under a light in the last row of Lot 1, slid across the icy parking lot, and walked up to the station where we hit a mass of people. It took us about 20 minutes to make our way to the gates where we used our tickets for the first (and only time) during the trip.

The ride was pleasant enough – in the beginning. About stops into the ride, a new announcer was added to the train. Soon, the annoying announcements began:

Don’t rush the train. Another train is behind this one.”

If you do not let the doors close, this train will be put out of service and everyone will have to get off.”

And my personal favorite:

People! This is not a playground! This is public transportation!”

Really, I thought she was going to threaten to pick a switch. By this point, she sounded just like my freakin’ stepmother when we would act up in the backseat of the car during a long trip. {We were evil children. LOL!}

For the record, the Metro system actually broke several ridership records during this period. There were so many people crammed onto the escalators that many of them stopped moving. Honestly, the poor little machines were probably screaming to themselves, in voices that sounded like they came from Wall-E: “You’re crushing me, you stupid fat assed Americans! Lose some weight!”

Sidebar: BTW, I don’t know how accurate those ridership numbers really are. The stations were so crowded that the Metro system gave up trying to charge people and just opened the gates. We were never charged for any of our rides — or our parking, for that matter.

 

Standing in Line for the Silver Ticket Gate

By the time we made it to the city, the lines were massive. The Coach, in an effort to get on my last nerve, kept repeating the phrase “It’s a sea of humanity.” Yes, yes it was. But really, after the first observation, the phrase became a bit trite. Fortunately, I was too excited to snark at him about his lack of originality in describing the crowd. All I can say was, I am glad that it wasn’t the middle of the summer or the body odor would have been enough to kill anyone.

We would stand in that line for at least 90 minutes, gradually moving towards our first checkpoint. Several times, we were crushed against other people and all I could think about was the poor Wal-Mart worker that was trampled to death in a stampede at Christmas time. That, and this book I had just read call the The Unthinkable which talked about how people are killed in stampedes in the Hajj. At one point, a cop car pulled through the crowd – how, I don’t know – which made the crowding situation even worse.

And then there was the bitch who called me rude. Me, rude? No, really?

All I was doing was stating the obvious fact that I simply could not move a step further to let the public health people through. There was no place to go. We were all crushed together. If she pushed us much more, we were all going to go tumbling like dominos or go flying like pieces of a Jenga game when it comes tumbling down. Then, she would have had a public health emergency right there. And can someone tell me, why weren’t the public health people at their station before 8:30 a.m.? Piss poor planning if you ask me.

For the record, it seems like all of the people trying to push through the crowd went for me, not The Coach. Sure, make your way for the short chick, thank you very much. At one point, I was annoyed enough that I thought about kicking people in the shins with my steel-toed Doc Martins, but then I remembered that I was not 12 years old.

The First Checkpoint
U.S. Capitol Police

 Eventually, we made it to the first checkpoint, which was manned by the poor cops shown above. As we waited for our turn to cross, the one cop told us that he had been on duty since 1:30 a.m. – and that he was scheduled until 11 p.m. that night. Holy crap! That’s almost a 24 hour shift! Those guys really had a thankless job, trying to keep something like, oh, I don’t know, 2 million people from rushing The Mall. They also had a pointless job because there was no way to really tell who had silver tickets and who didn’t. Sure, they shouted at us to hold them in the air, but really, how could they tell?

When we finally made it through that checkpoint, we stood crushed into another line headed for the TSA gate. Now, we had hopes to get in the front part of the Silver Ticket section, but according to the rumors we heard, a bunch of ticketless fucks stormed the barricade and filled it up. {Blah!} Those of us who actually followed the rules ended up in the second tier of the Silver Tickets, which was still better than being back at the Washington Monument.

We got to The Mall and had to go through a security checkpoint operated by the TSA. Well, that was a joke. No metal detectors at all. My guy looked at me, said “open your coat,” and lightly tapped me under the armpits. Really? I could have been packing heat in a little ankle holster and nobody would have been the wiser. The Coach, on the other hand, was severely punished for dressing in Unibomber fashion:

Damn!” he said. “The only place they didn’t pat down was my package!”

On the Mall
During the Inauguration

Woot! So we made it to The Mall – along with 250,000 other Silver Ticket holders. We were crammed into our little square of The Mall tighter than a can of sardines. Fortunately, we were surrounded by some funny people including these two black school teachers who had all sorts of commentary about the tall folks who were blocking our view of the Jumbotron. Yeah, we short people were completely screwed by those 6 foot tall men who insisted on putting up their hoods which just made their heads that much fatter. {Blah} And, there were no special allowances for children – the crowd shouted at this one father to take his kid off of his shoulders. That poor kid – you should have seen his face.

The speakers weren’t much better. At first they were too low. Then the timing was off, so everybody’s words echoed down The Mall. Oh, and the few flashes I had of the Jumbotron were hysterical because the sound and the video feed did not match up. It was like viewing a poorly dubbed Kung Fu movie.

Yet, I had an excellent time. I wasn’t cold because we were wedged into that place tighter than the penguins in Antarctica in the middle of their winter. When Bush took the stage, the boos echoed down The Mall, which startled me at first (so rude!). Then, the Good-Bye song rolled through The Mall. I kinda’ felt a little bad for the man. Maybe I never should have went to see that Oliver Stone movie?

After Obama’s speech was over, people poured out of The Mall, but we hung back to see/hear Elizabeth Alexander give her poem. We took a few pictures of The Capitol, all dolled up for the day. This is when The Coach made his big mistake: he went to the Porta-Potty. He ended up missing W’s big escape via Marine One (more people shouting at the top of their lungs). More importantly, he was completely grossed out by the experience.

I need to take a shower as soon as we get back to B’s,” he said.

Yeah, I managed to avoid the indignity of entering any of the disgusting johns by not drinking anything. I made like a camel, let me tell you. Of course, I made The Coach stop at the first fast food restaurant he could find when we got off the train in Shady Grove, but that’s another story. 

Bumper Sticker in Metro Station
Pre-Inauguration

We had some issues getting back out of the city. We stood in line for half an hour at a Metro Stop that was subsequently closed. Then we stood in line for 2 hours at the Capitol South station before we made it to a train. Later, we learned that the ambulance that went racing by us was the one hauling Ted Kennedy to the hospital.

So, we survived. We saw history. But, would I do it again? Uh … only if it was my inauguration.