Jessica's trip to the Inauguration

Vermont Dean Blogger, Jessica Falker, set this to post

on Thursday, 1/22/09 at 9:24am

but it somehow was still sitting in Draft!  ENJOY!!

On Sunday, January 18, 2009, I woke up at 4:30am, threw my suitcase in the car and headed off to the inauguration of our 44th President, Barack Obama! First I picked up my Aunt Jeannette in Southern Vermont. There are no bus stations in Central or Southern, VT, so from there we drove to Albany, NY to get on our Greyhound bus. It was windy and snowing the whole way there, but we made it safely. We had a transfer in New York City and then arrived in Silver Spring, MD (just north of DC) that evening.

We stayed at a friends house that night and left there very early the next morning to go to our hotel in Downtown DC where we would be spending the next 2 nights. It was too early to check in so we left our luggage with the front desk and walked to the closest Metro to get to Bernie Sanders office where we needed to pick up our tickets. When we arrived at the Senate office building, there was a line around the block to get in, but that was OK, we knew we would be standing in lots of lines during this trip. We got in and got our tickets. Unfortunately Bernie wasn't there himself, but the person handing out the tickets was someone I knew, so that was cool because I didn't even know he worked for Bernie now!

We were starving at that point so decided to look for a restaurant. That was a lot harder then it sounds! We walked up and down streets for about 2 hours before we found a restaurant (where do all those people who live and work in DC eat?), but while we were walking we saw lots of monuments and buildings, so that was cool. After lunch we took the Metro back to the hotel, checked in and took a nap. We had dinner at the hotel and decided to go to bed "early" (11pm) so we could get up early the next day. We had planned to take part in a service activity that day as Obama had asked everyone to do, but it just didn't work out...I did give a homeless person my pack of cigarettes that morning, so I'm counting that ;-)

We had set 2 alarms for 3:30am and neither of them went off! Luckily we also put in a wake-up call for 3:50, just in case, so we jumped out of bed when that rang, threw on almost every piece of clothing we had brought, and headed off for the inauguration at 4am! This was the 3rd morning in a row that I had been up before dawn, but who needs sleep ;-) The Metro was packed! We did get on the first train we needed, but we were squished right on there!

We arrived at our gate's line about 4:30am. It was a single file line and we were about the 200th people in it. We were in that line about 1/2 hour, and there were probably about 500 people in line at that point when one of the security people yelled for everyone to move to another place to line up. This of coarse made everyone start running to the new place in a totally disorganized way. The new line was about 30 people wide and we were about 20 people back, so we ended up a little farther back, but that was OK. This was our home for the next 3 hours until the gates opened at 8am. It was 19 degrees and felt like 8 degrees with the wind chill, but as I overheard 1 person say on her cell phone "I can't feel my fingers or toes, but there's no place I'd rather be!" So we sang, and chanted, and marched in place to keep circulation in our feet, and bid on imaginary cups of coffee, and sang some more. We finally resorted to Christmas carols because everyone knew the words. LOL.

I've waited to talk about the most important part of this trip until now because I took a picture that sort of puts what 2 million people were feeling for 2 straight days and nights into a visual image.