Dad and Susan arrived on Sunday. They'd done a lot of work for the Obama campaign in their small town in Florida and were very excited about the chance to celebrate the culmination of all their hard work. I'd originally planned to take the kids downtown since they were off from school and had been very engaged in the election process (thanks to the great work of their school...hats off to GBE), but after talking it over with other mom's in the area, and reading all the warnings on the Inauguration websites I decided not to.
Dad and I had exchanged a lot of emails trying to make plans for the event. While there was a lot of information for people who had tickets...there wasn't much at all for the 1.75 million of the rest of us who didn't! (In fact I noticed today that there was a message from the inaugural committee listserv stating that they were going to look into that issue..along with some other logistics that came up during the course of the day). When they got here we spent some time firming up the plan, with the guiding principle that we would need to be flexible when we got there. They went downtown on Monday (using the commemorative metro tickets I'd accidentally bought before realizing that they didn't come with any fare on them) and had a blast and based on how things were set of then we decided our 'A-plan' was to get off at Federal Triangle metro and then see whether it made more sense, based on the crowds, to try to get closer to the Capitol or head back to the Lincoln Memorial.
The part of the plan I wasn't completely on board with was getting out the door at 3:30 am and taking a taxi in order to ensure that we got a parking spot at the metro. I thought it was overkill to get up that early. I was very wrong. While there was hardly any traffic leading up to the metro stop, the exit for the metro was already backed up over a mile when we got there at 3:45. By 4:15 we had only barely made to the "exit" part of the exit. About 10 minutes later we decided to bail and walked the rest of the way. Our $20 taxi ride cost almost $60 in the end! But we were all hyped up on adrenaline and practically flew to the entrance....that was either adrenaline or the need to get inside as quickly as possible. It was 24 degrees with a wind chill of 15 and the moon was still out!
No comments:
Post a Comment