On Sunday morning, Doug met up with a friend of his from Berkeley and they walked to the Lincoln Memorial to stake out a spot for the Inaugural kick-off concert later that afternoon. Several hundred thousand people attended the concert (with artists U2, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Usher, Beyonce, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Wonder, Garth Brooks, and Herbie Hancock as well as guest speakers Tiger Woods, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and Tom Hanks among others).
Later that night we spent some time with Katrina's oldest sister and her husband who live about 30 min. outside DC. We had a really good dinner and played a couple games of Settlers.
On Monday night we invited all of our friends in the DC area to come over for a party. Will and Jamie Taylor also came up from North Carolina (although not just for the party) and in all there were about 20 people; it was really fun to see all of them again. There was some cake and ice cream (I turned 30) but mostly just hanging out until 1 am.
At 4 a.m. Katrina, Jamie, Will and I woke up and worked our way downtown to get in line for the Swearing In ceremony. We arrived at our spot around 4:45 a.m. with temperatures in the low teens.
Our early arrival put us about 100 people from the front of our line, which quickly grew to several thousand in just a few hours. After hopping up and down for 2 hours, we were escorted through security and down into our section (marked by the small red X on the map).
We staked out a place on the front row, right up against the ropes and continued to hop up and down while eating Sun Chips and dried pineapple.
The crowds were unbelievable! We were standing directly underneath a JumboTron that kept showing images of the national mall which was PACKED with people. Several dignitaries started to arrive and the anticipation started to build. There was silence when President Bush was announced. No cheers...but no boos either. Same for John McCain. Only Senator Lieberman elicited boos - very loud boos - from the crowd when he made his appearance. Not too many people were pleased that the Democrat spoke at the Republican convention and dissed Obama.
After many hours of waiting, Obama finally made his entrance. Here is video footage that we took from our section of that moment:
After a very quick (but really good) program, Obama finally stood to take the oath:
and then gave an inspiring speech:
We were so excited after the whole event that we spent all of the cash in our wallets on Obama trinkets being hawked in the streets near the Capitol: bumper stickers, t-shirts, beanie hats, posters, buttons, etc. The Metro was absolutely packed and we spent almost 30 minutes in a herd of people packed so tightly that you could kiss the neck of the 8 people standing next to you.
We made our way back to the apartment and packed our things. Exhausted we took off for Norfolk that night to catch our flight early Wednesday morning. We stopped in Salt Lake for two hours and were able to pick up Sampson (from Mom who so generously drove him up there and staked out a spot to wait for us).
Thursday Katrina was back at work and I was back in class. It was a whirlwind weekend, but something neither of us will ever forget.
Here are links to the other 2 videos we took of the event:
Obama chant
Obama speech zoomed in
No comments:
Post a Comment