Life and Times: January 2009

All is well. Although the trip didn't go as planned, we had a wonderful time and it was totally worth not paying off a credit card!

We did our last minute stuff on Saturday before we left. I needed to put together a medical authorization letter for Rachel and get our suitcase to my sister who was leaving that night. We only needed to carry our backpacks through the airport. Cool! I also arranged for Rachel to get a little gift every morning we were gone.

Before takeoff at LAX.

We got to DC at 6pm local time. We caught a cab to the hotel, which was in Arlington (Crystal City), just over the bridge from DC. The hotel turned out to be perfect as it's connected to an underground mall and a Metro station. My sister met us at the hotel and soon our other friends showed up. We put on CNN and MSNBC and tried to figure out how we were going to get to DC. All the bridges would be closed that night. The Metro stops running at 2am and starts up again at 4am on Inauguration Day.

We went down into the underground mall to have dinner and found tons of people mobbing the vendors. It's like Obama was a rockstar around here. Everyone was joking that the Inauguration will bring DC out of the recession. The hotel was full of kids going to the Inauguration. The energy was wild.

We figured everyone would be jumping on the Metro at 4am. We were pretty much the last stop before DC, so we were thinking the trains would be full by the time they reached us. Also, the official Inauguration website was suggesting that everyone within 2 miles should walk. We were within two miles. Hijola!

We actually decided that we'd start walking at 2:30am. However, my sister had the brilliant idea of catching a cab to the 14th St. bridge to cut down on the time we're in the cold. Ummm...we pretty much didn't sleep all night. We were still on west coast time, so midnight still felt like 9pm. I wanted to get the latest on the news reports. If we were going to leave at 2:30am, I figured I'd start getting ready at 1:30am. Didn't seem to matter to sleep for an hour. I didn't feel it until sitting in the waiting room of the ER later that night -- more about that later.

Waiting in the hotel lobby at 3am.

We went down to the lobby and Starbucks was already getting ready to open. We asked for a cab for 5 and the front desk was like, "Now?" :-) As we were waiting in the lobby, though, people started coming downstairs to start waiting for the Metro. We needed to get going. We decided to take two cabs. I actually said, "Follow that cab." LOL

The cab drivers got us on the freeway straight to the 14th Street Bridge, however it was closed. We needed to get to the pedestrian path. Of course, we had no idea how to get there. Miraculously, though, as we approached the bridge, the state trooper backed up his car to let us through!! We could not believe it. We just told the cab drivers to get us as close to the Mall as possible. Amazing!

We tried to get to 4th Street as that is closest you can get without a ticket. However, they were only letting ticket holders go that way, so we headed to 7th Street. On the Inaugural site, they had a walking map of the area showing pedestrian entrances. That confused me as couldn't we just walk up any street? Apparently not. They actually had the entire city surrounded by fencing. I couldn't believe it. They must've started that around midnight or something. And watching some people on TV, I suspect they were out all night long. Hijola!

We actually got to the National Mall around 3:30am and there were already people waiting to get onto the Mall. We were standing at 7th and Independence Ave. At first, there were two lines along the fence, but as people started getting off the metro at 4am, they just started filling the street. The rumor started going around that the gates wouldn't be opened until 7am and people started to get antsy as we saw people walking around inside the Mall (I think they were security). I'm so glad they finally decided to let us in at 5am.

We had no idea what the temperature was going to be that night. We were watching the coverage on CNN and MSNBC and they didn't exactly have a weather report. If we had known it would go down to 8F degrees, we may not have went out there. So maybe it was good that we didn't know. I just assumed it was 20F degrees. How would I know? I don't know the difference between 10F and 20F. :-)

We finally got to our spot about 5am. I'm so glad I brought a blanket. There were cardboard trashcans all around and people started tearing them apart to sit on. The ground was sooo cold. I also brought those silver emergency blankets which Liz, Julie, and Kathy used, but I'm not sure how effective those were. They laid down for a bit, but George and I just huddled together. At one point, I couldn't feel my toes anymore, so I put some toe warmers into my shoes. Those really helped. I have to say the warmers were the best thing we brought. I was hungry when we got there, so I had a pb&j sandwich that I made before leaving. I might've had a snack later, but we pretty much didn't eat (or drink) the entire time.

We went with our friends Liz and Julie and my sister Kathy. Liz has been to DC numerous times for work, so she knows the city very well. Kathy has been once before with Liz and it was Julie's first time. They arrived on Sunday and managed to get to the concert. Liz also scoped out the jumbotron she wanted to see. LOL

Can you tell it's cold?

We were in front of the second jumbotron (the first one on the north side of the Mall). It pretty much was at the front of the non-ticketed section. Later we heard that the street behind us had been closed, so no more people could come into our section. We ended up having some space around us as I think some people left during the night.

Cell phones were not working. I'm so glad I learned how to text before we left. :-)

The energy was unbelievable when President Obama appeared. We were given flags to wave and people were cheering. There were actually alot of older African-Americans there and I can just imagine they remember when their parents couldn't vote.

Although, Obama's speech didn't have a "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" line, I thought it was superb. I loved the ideas and the promises for our country. It was perfect.

Around this time, though, George said he was very cold. We were all cold, of course, but I had one last body warmer and we put that under his jacket. However, during the poetry reading, he was suddenly thristy and was not feeling well in general.

After the Inauguration.

We decided to go into one of the "warming stations": the Air and Space Museum. Everyone was just sitting on the floor of the museum or standing in line for the restrooms. We found a spot and dumped our stuff. When George took off his jacket, it was wet inside. ?? Not sure why that would happen. Then he got the chills and I suggested he change one of his shirts for the extra sweatshirt that I brought. He didn't want to as he thought he would get colder. He went to the restroom and then we stood in line for coffee and something to eat at the McDonald's inside the museum. This was the biggest McDonald's I've seen, I think. George managed to eat something and have a bit of coffee, but he couldn't get warm. We decided to go to first aid.

The EMT arrived and took George's temperature. It was 102F! He wasn't cold, he was burning up. The EMT took George to the first aid office which was very warm. Finally, George took off his jacket and started to feel better. However, we heard that the Metro station was jammed and they were telling people to go to the next station which was about 7 blocks away. There was no way we were going to find a cab now and we couldn't have George walking for two hours (if we walked back to the hotel). So we decided to call an ambulance.

They were the nicest. I'm sure they wondered why we'd go to the hospital for a fever, but we didn't want to risk it getting any worse. They ended up taking us to the other side of town, because the nearby hospitals were prepared for a disaster.

The ER doctor was very funny. Apparently, George's fever had gone down and the doc asked George where we were from. The doc said, "That's your problem! You're from California. I've been getting people all day from Florida and California!" He did order an EKG and we waited.

All of that actually didn't take that much time, but the checkout procedure actually took two hours. Hijola. George met a nice lady, though, in the waiting room and that made the time fly by.

When we were ready to leave, however, we couldn't get a cab. Ummmm...it was the night of the Inaugural balls. There wouldn't be a cab anywhere. We asked the security guard about the Metrobus and a man standing next to him offered to take us to the station. We said sure! Apparently he drove some kind of hospital shuttle, but how do we know for sure? All turned out well, though. We got to the station. The person working at the Metro told us which line to take and we were on our way back to the hotel.

Security.

I have to say I'm totally amazed that there was not one arrest. The crowd really was there to have a good time. I'm wondering if the discrepancies in timing of the Metro and the security sweep were done on purpose, so that no one knew exactly what was going on. A very strange thing happened to us *three* times. During the Inauguration ceremony, a man walked up and took a picture of our backpacks and then walked back to his spot in the crowd. George and I saw him and couldn't figure out what the heck he was taking a picture of. All of our packs were in a pile on a blanket. I was standing behind them so that people didn't step all over them.

Then when we were in the museum, a woman came up and took a picture of my backpack! In that split second when you're wondering what was going on, I didn't think to ask her what she was doing. The weird thing was that when I went to the bathroom, the same thing happened to George! All I can think is that it's some kinda security thing. Maybe they wanted to see what our reaction would be?? I have no idea.

Wednesday, we decided to just take it easy. We woke up late and took our time getting ready. We watched a little bit of the Inauguration recap. We had some yummy sandwiches at a rib place and I had a melon margarita. No driving, whoot! We did some souvenier shopping, then went back to the hotel to rest. Soon it was dinner time. We found a place called San Antonio and assumed it would be Mexican food. However, they had all kinds of things from Cuban, to Peruvian, to Puerto Rican. And of course, I had another margarita. It was great just to spend a day lazing about.

On Thursday, we decided to try to get out to the National Mall for a bit of sightseeing. George had never been to DC before and wanted to get a bearing for where we were during the Inauguration. However, a huge pro-life demonstration was happening on the same spot.

We walked around a bit and got as close to the Capitol as possible, then went over to the Museum of the American Indian. We didn't have a lot of time to look around, so we stopped at the cafeteria before heading back. I have to say that was the best cafeteria/museum food I've ever had!