Elise and my Inauguration Day adventure -- part 2

At the end of part 1, Elise and I had made it into the silver section and were working our way up to get as close as we could. If you look at the map of the ticketed areas you can see that Third Street bisects the silver section. There was a fence on Third Street with only two openings to allow people to move up closer to the Capitol building's reflecting pool. They were doing the same thing that Metro had been doing: stopping everyone until the previous group had filtered into the crowd on the other side. Again, I have to wonder why a bottleneck on the west side of Third Street is better than a bottleneck on the east side. Luckily, it was only about a 10 or 15 minute wait to get across.

Once across, we started making our way to the reflecting pool. Our goal for the day was to be right up against the pool so that Elise would have an unobstructed view without me having to put her up on my shoulders. About 50 feet from the reflecting pool, there was two lines of plastic fencing. The section immediately in front of the pool was apparently reserved for handicapped people. The problem was that there was huge area cordoned off, but only about 20 people in wheelchairs. It was way too tempting for the huge crowd behind the fences.

About 5 minutes after we got too the first fence, someone a few feet from us knocked a section down and, very much like a broken dam, those of use close to the break flowed through to the next fence. Some people we had flowed in front of weren't very happy and their vocal displeasure caught the attention of a police officer who basically said "What do you want me to do?" So, they asked if they could move up, too. He shrugged and walked off. That was the end of the first fence. Within a minute or so, it came down along its entire length and the crowd was up to the second fence.

We were talking with a few people about how the second fence wasn't going to survive either. Everyone agreed that by 11, we'd be at the reflecting pool. This was around 9:30 or so. The fence was just plastic fencing zip-tied to posts. I demonstrated that a swift kick was all that was required to break the zip-tie. It didn't take until 11; about 10 minutes later the second fence was down and the crowd had advanced to the reflecting pool.

Elise and I tried to move towards the center, but only made it a little ways, so we ended up at the edge of the reflecting pool, but a little to the right. That put some trees right in our line-of-sight, but we could sort-of see the podium and could easily see the two jumbo-trons on either side of the Capitol.

We hung out there for a good while. A crowd of silver ticket holders made a break down the right side of the reflecting pool, towards the blue ticket area, but the cops were on the ball and shut that down quick. Most of them just stayed on the right side of the pool for the rest of the day.

At this point, we mainly just waited and chatted with the people around us. We met people from New Orleans, South Chicago, and a mom & daughter (if I remember correctly) from Alaska. Yesterday, I was reading this blog entry. The picture in that blog entry shows the exact spot where we were standing and the daughter of the Alaska mom/daughter duo we talked with. I helped he lady at the front with the poofy white hat with directions to the Inaugural Store and Ben's Chili Bowl. I think she was a Chicago-ite. For a little bit of foreshadowing, the police taped section near the trees across the reflecting pool will come into our story shortly.

As we were standing there, we saw a pretty steady stream of people moving down the left side of the reflecting pool. A police officer said he thought they were the purple ticket holders who had been held up for so long. They weren't; a lot of the purple ticket holders never actually made it to the inauguration due to some technical problems, I think.

We watched this stream of people and the girl from New Orleans said she and her aunt were going to go try to get closer. They were going to wave if they made it. I watched through the binoculars for 10 minutes or so, but never saw them wave. But, as I watched, it sure looked like people were just walking up from behind the relfecting pool, so Elise and I, after a few minutes of indecision because we didn't want to end up with a worse view than we had already, decided to go for it. We told the people we were with that we would wave our red blanket on the other side of the pool if we made it.

It turns out that the cops on the left side were not quite so on-the-ball as the cops on the right. They had basically just given up on keeping the silver people out, so a steady stream continued in, filling up what I assume was the purple ticket section as well as the monument on the opposite side of the pool. People had climbed up on all of the shorter statues that were part of the monument.

When we got over there, we walked towards that section near the trees I referenced before, waving our blanket when were lined up with our previous location. When we left our spots at the back of the pool it wasn't taped off yet, but it was when we made it across. So, we started walking to the front of the monument and saw a mostly empty spot on the other side of the bushes you can see at the top left of that photo. So, we cut through the bushes and came up to a fence on the sidewalk of First Street keeping us in the grass. There was a guy about 5 feet to our left and a cop about 5 feet further to his left. As soon as we got there, the guy hopped over the fence with no reaction from the cop to his left or the several cops in the street. So, I grabbed Elise and put her on the other side, handed her our stuff and hopped the fence myself.

So, this is how we came to our final location on the west side of First Street, far beyond our goal or even our assigned section. We had a perfect line-of-sight to the podium. The picture to the right shows our view. Click on it to see it larger on flickr. With our binoculars we could see peoples' faces. It was a great spot--way better than we could've hoped for.

At this point, it was about 11:15 and they had already announced Congress and the Supreme Court's entrances. It was still a little while until Obama's entrance and we spent the time munching some of our food and talking the family from Vermont next to us. While waiting, a guy in the grass behind us started climbing a tree and was promptly removed by the police. They checked his ticket, which was silver and I assume they just sent him back to the silver section. But, maybe he's at Guantanamo.

When they announced Obama's entrance, the place went crazy. A couple million people in one place all cheering at once sure can kick up a noise. I'm a little tingly now remembering the excitement of that moment. The only thing louder and more exciting was the moment after he took the oath.

I only have a couple things to say about the Inauguration itself, except that I was a little embarrassed by the booing. There was a good amount of booing for any republican, but it was really loud for Bush. I mean, I disagree with almost everything he did and feel he was a terrible president, but what good does booing him and his family do? It was just tacky. Everyone I've spoken to who watched it on TV said that they didn't hear the booing and when I watched it on CSPAN later, you could tell that they had turned off the audience mics when he came out, so you could only hear the crowd near the podium who were much more polite.

On a more positive note, I thought Obama's speech was excellent and got a little misty at this part, as this is a belief near and dear to my heart (heck, I'm getting a little misty just reading it again):

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. [...] Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
[...]
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

After the speech, Elise and I started making our way home. We assumed it would be even harder to get home since everyone would be leaving at the same time instead of over a period of hours like in the morning. It was crazy in the streets on the way back to the metro station, but once there we only stood in line for 20 minutes or so before our turn to walk down the escalators. We caught the second yellow line train and were back in Springfield by 3 and back home by 3:45.

All-in-all, it was a great day. Elise and I had a great time and were able to have a great daddy-daughter adventure together. We're very lucky to have been able to go and witness this historic event.

Here are few more pictures of us & the capitol we took:







We saw this one as we were leaving. Quite a few people apparently decided getting on top of the porto-potties would give them a better view: