Tks to those who blogged here – found pictures of “our spot” by Washington Monument, found out numbers of now friends we partied with, how many folks joined us on our pilgrimage up and down 17th and 18th streets – everything except “how cold was it”/ Hats off to the folksin the crowd, the Metro riders and workers, and the Police officers in Silver Springs (don’t even ask). You were all part of a day we’ll never forget!

Ask yourself this, were the principals and teachers members of gangs in their youth that were associated with the modern graffiti you see. The answer you get may very well shock you!

In 2007 a teacher I spoke to told me that she couldn’t in good faith call the police on drug dealers on school grounds because when she was a teenager she did her fair share of LOVE BOAT!

(aka PCP)

They may not clean up their schools because they may not see drug gangs as a negative thing. I’m being 100% serious here and not at all joking.

My only disappointment was Coolidge and the adjoining Whittier Elementary didn’t clean up their gang graffiti prior to Obama arriving. How embarrassing. I stopped calling for graffiti clean up on the schools several months ago and was wondering if anything would enable DCPS to request graffiti clean up on their own. I guess not! How do you keep a straight face giving a speech on hope and change in the midst of such crapulence? Shame!!!!!

We split up on the way back – 2 of us got caught in the river of people on 18th street, and it took until 4pm to get home. 2 others avoided 18th and took 21st, and spent the afternoon waiting at Shwarma King until caught up with them (since we had the keys!).

All in all, great time. Could have watched it on TV, but it was an incredible experience to be down there in person.

After it was over, we took a seat and people watched for a bit before trying to make our way over to the Museum of Natural History where my friend (a Secret Service agent in from his regular post in San Francisco) was posted and waiting for us. Unfortunately that was the only glitch in the day – we couldn’t get back East on the North side of the Mall, so we abandoned that idea and headed up VA Ave. SW back to the Hill and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking and playing pool in the Lil Pub. We got back to my place in time to stand out front with some High Lifes and watch the Presidential motorcade drive past on its way to the Armory.

My favorite part was everyone bitching about how cold it was (myself included) and the pair of Ottawans I had in tow laughing at them. (They’ve been having highs in the single digits, and it’d recently gotten down to -35 – they thought it was downright balmy here.)

I had a bad time, unfortunately. Perhaps not as bad as the purple ticket holders — that sounded like a giant mess. I think my first wrong choice was to go for the parade and not the inauguration, because my college’s marching band was in the parade. I think people who went to the inauguration had a much more positive experience overall.

I was up around 5:30-ish and left my house around 6:30-ish and rode my bike downtown. That all went well, I did the bike valet thing.

I got a security at E, just south of 10th, and decided to join it. That was when things got awful. The line was thick, like multiple people wide, and there was no attempt to form any kind of line structure at all. There were just people pressed in as hard as they could…it was to the point where I could barely move my arms, I couldn’t turn my head, I couldn’t do anything but just stand in that line and deal with people pressing in on me from all sides. It was really cold, my feet were starting to freeze, and after two hours, I think i had moved maybe 20 feet. There was no sign that I could get close to the gate at all, so I just bailed. I was so upset by that point. It turns out that what they were doing was letting in groups of maybe 50 people at a time, screening them all, then letting in another 50 people, screening them all, etc. So there was no kind of continuous movement. Plus, people were “joining” (read: cutting) in the line at the sides, so we were all getting shoved more and the “line” was super-wide. Horrible.

Part of the time I was in the line I had managed to listen to a little bit of my radio, and there was a reporter who said he was at 13th Street and that the line was long but moving smoothly. So, since I would have had to walk back west to get to my bike anyway, I headed in that direction. Totally different situation. The volunteers were keeping the lines single file, they were continuously moving, I got frisked and was into the secure area in 20 minutes, if that.

This was sometime between 10 and 11 (I bailed out of the first line at 10.) So I was there with a bunch of people at 15th and Pennsy through the inauguration, but there were no jumbotrons near us. They were playing music instead. They piped the NPR feed to us when the ceremony started, so that was nice and moving and all, but they didn’t do the whole thing, so I didn’t hear the poem or Lowery’s prayer. Afterwards, most people didn’t leave because no one wanted to give up their parade viewing spot. I had to walk away, though — I couldn’t imagine standing up for another what I thought would be two hours. I cannot even impress upon people who weren’t there how cold and miserable it was at this point.

Then the parade finally started, and we were told it was going to be 2.5 hours. I knew then that I couldn’t stay until 6:30 — no way. By the time Barack’s limousine got to my location, it was well after 4:30. He wasn’t walking near us, he just drove by. I got pictures of…the chain link fence I was behind, because I had given up my space and people weren’t about to let me go back in. Then I had to book it out of there because the bike valet service was closing at 5. So I saw no Barack (unless a glimpse of him behind a car window counts) and I saw none of my college’s marching band. Though if I had known that they were #4 in the parade lineup, maybe I would have tried…but it would have been tough to do with the bike valet deadline.

One nice thing is that as I rode toward home, I saw a 54 bus was coming. Thank god I know how to operate those bus bike racks because I had my bike up there so fast…I knew I would have had a hell of a time biking all the way uphill back to Petworth. And of course, I left my bus farecard in my bike trunk. But the bus driver said don’t worry about it. God bless him. That was the best thing that happened to me yesterday.

I spent most of the rest of the day under my electric blanket, with it turned up to high.

Listened to the swearing in ceremony on a car stereo, then drank margaritas at El Rinconcito’s on M and 11th. They were playing Faux News, so we saw many shots of Bush flying away, but at least it was in English. Then went home and napped with the parade on. It was a mess, and i’m still really sad about it. At least Obama is officially President!