Howdy -

    I had originally intended to write at least two, maybe three separate blogs about what it was like to be in DC for the inaugural. But as I was swept in the vortex of all of it, I found I had no time to even collect my thoughts, let alone write them down, accidentally delete them, curse at my computer, and then write them down again, which is my usual writing process. 

   Thus, as I lie on my hotel bed with my laptop, freshly returned from my 10 hour Inaugural ordeal, I can do nothing but offer one grand, sweeping first-hand account of history. It will be epic, like "Gone with the Wind" except things turn out better for Atlanta, or like "Moby Dick" except that calling me "Ishmael" is likely to just confuse me. It will be like the Torah, except with very little religion and much less begetting. It will be grand poetry, like the stuff that doesn't rhyme, a trilogy in two parts, a haiku with infinite syllables, a legend, a myth and a self-help book. And it all starts with my car getting towed. 

   My wife Jen, our friend Dina and I drove to DC at about midnight on Sunday night. This was my idea, the theory being that there would be no traffic at that time. The theory was correct, but apparently so was the theory that there would be no traffic on Monday morning. THAT theory would have allowed us to sleep at home, drive at a reasonable hour, and not park my car in the private garage of my friend Adam. 

   Be that as it may, we slept at Adam's place for a few hours Sunday night. When we awoke Monday morning we had a difficult time finding our car in his lot. That's because it wasn't there. It had been towed by a man who called himself "Turtle" and for the low, low price of $205 I could have my very own car back. When I went to pick up the car I tried to show Turtle my disapprobation by giving him the cold shoulder. I discovered however that Turtle was remarkably taciturn and refused to demonstrate any noticeable interest in the health of our relationship. To demonstrate, allow me to recount a portion of our conversation

                   ME

   What do I owe you?

                   TURTLE

    Give me  205 dollars

                    ME

     Do you find that you are self-actualized in this job?

                   TURTLE

     (scratches his arm)

Pause

     (blows his nose)

                     ME

      Where'd you get the name Turtle?

                    TURTLE

       Give me 205 Dollars

   After I got my car back, we checked into our hotel. It was the hotel hosting most of the Pennsylvania contingent. The decor was really nice...in 1956. Now, not so much. The first thing we did was watch some news. One of the interesting phenomena that occur when you go to one of these huge historic events is that you are right in the middle of things, yet since your perspective is limited, you have no idea what is going on. This was the case at the Democratic National Convention in Denver and I was committed to trying to keep up with what was happening as I witnessed it. 

    After that we had to go to a restaurant near Union Station for a dinner I threw for about 25 people. We got in a cab and quickly realized that the carefree-no traffic morning was gone. The roads were packed. After paying $21 to go three blocks in 45 minutes we got out and walked. It was then we first recognized that Washington had become Obama-city. Each street corner had bling-stands selling everything from Obama buttons and T-shirts to towels, jewelry and "Obama Cologne". That's right. Apparently, for $15 you can smell like Barack Obama. 

    As we walked further (there was a lot of walking this week) we noticed that almost every store had some Obama sign or painting in the window. Delis had ads for various Obama sandwiches or salads. Thousands of people were scurrying on each crowded street with the word "Obama" on them somewhere. I was here in 1993 and 97 for the Clinton inaugurals and they were nothing like this. Now, I am a huge Obama fan. I was an early supporter, a delegate at the convention and a Barack vote in the Electoral College. Sure, I've shaved Barack's visage into my hair and have the permanent "Yes We Can" facial tattoo. But the hero worship I saw in DC this week was a bit much even for me. 

    Later Monday night we went to the Pennsylvania "Yes We Did" party at the hotel. It was seemingly packed with everyone who had ever been to Pennsylvania. The featured band was "Sister Sledge", whose last hit "We Are Family" came out slightly before "Billy Don't be a Hero" and was first played at the Eisenhower Inaugural. But some things are timeless. Not that, but some things. At one point, Midge Rendell, our First Lady, elegant, and surprisingly rhythmic took the stage and danced with the band and for a brief moment, all 248 candidates for Governor in 2010 seemed to embrace Barack's call to unity. We went to bed feeling like we were about to witness a new era being born. 

   On Tuesday, Inauguration Day, the alarm went off at 6:30 a.m., interrupting the recurring dream I have involving me repeatedly hitting Celine Dion with a goose. I'm not sure what the dream means, but I find it very relaxing. Our entire posse than gathered in our room and prepared as if going into battle. The forecast called for wind chills in the low teens, so each of us had a detailed layering plan. 

    We also gathered our tickets and maps. Each ticket had a color which determined how close you were going to be to Barack at the magic moment. Jen and I had highly coveted orange tickets because I was an elector (although I told my friends that the orange tickets were for "smart people"). People with orange tickets had seats, as did some of the people in the purple section. There was also a green section and a silver section which involved standing and started a full half mile away from the stage. All of us had some color but no more than a few of the same color, so we all had to split up. 

    As we left the hotel at 8:15, we began the two mile walk to the Capitol. At first, the crowd was thin, but thickened with every block. It was frigid, but there was a palpable purpose in our collective strides. We all really felt that we were walking into history and everyone knew that everyone else felt the same. There was, however, a problem. 

    All of the streets were blocked. We asked a police officer where we should go to get in and were told to go to First Avenue. When we got there we found we were joining 10,000 people or more already packed into a narrow street. After about an hour the crowd had ballooned to over 20,000 and they were not letting anyone in. As the crowd compressed, the risk of someone being tramped to death became dangerously high. Fearing that "someone" might be me, I became panicked and used my brute force and my talent for irony to force my way (along with Jen) out of the pack an onto another street which was much better organized. Of everything I experienced this week, the (what I am calling) "Purple Ticket Apocalypse" was by far the biggest and potentially most consequential glitch. 

     Finally, we made it into our seats about 80 yards away from the podium and dead center. The seats couldn't have been better and by now the weather was sunny and brisk. I stood on my seat and looked backwards and saw a sea of people stretching back past the Washington Monument. It was breathtaking. I felt at last that all of my effort; the long drive, the cold, the endless walking, the near-death by crushing, dealing with Turtle, it had all been worth it. Now, all I had to do was sit back, on the same ground where Martin Luther King said "I have a dream", and face the same Capitol dome Martin faced while I watched that dream come true. 

    The ceremony was started by a man with a deep voice announcing each dignitary as they came out. When the man announced "The President of the United States, George W. Bush," 2 million people spontaneously started singing "Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye". I thought this was uncalled for. I'm certainly no fan of President Bush, but insulting him as he departed seemed gratuitous. I tried to distract the crowd by starting another song, "Don't sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me", but it never really caught on. 

    Finally, Barack approached the podium to take the oath. Dozens of people around me broke out in tears even before he said a word. Almost all of them did so from the sheer historical heft of the moment, (the one notable exception was the woman whose tears were the result of me crushing her foot with my chair leg). 

    Then something amazing happened, Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the oath of office. Keep in mind, this is a 39 word oath that every second-grader has memorized. The Chief Justice knew for the past 4 years that this moment would come. You'd think he'd have nailed this. Him messing it up is like the Pope mis-stating the Lord's Prayer, or a groom completely getting tangled up during "I DO".

       After the Inaugural address, there was a great moment. The tradition is that the incoming and outgoing Presidents and Vice-Presidents go to the back of the Capitol where there is a farewell ceremony. There are handshakes all around and then the Vice President gets in a limo and the now ex-President gets on a helicopter and flies back to Crawford, Texas (I think that's where they all go, at least since Milliard Fillmore, but I'll have to check on that).

    Dick Cheney apparently sprained a back muscle and thus was in a wheelchair. It was a fitting end to his tenure as the Torquemada of the administration to see him wheeled into his car, whacking small children with his cane to get them out of his way. Sometimes, when they weren't in his way, he'd swoop his chair over to whack them anyway.

    Then, President Obama hugged President Bush and walked him to the Helicopter. The crowd in front of the capitol was slowly dispersing to the exits. But many of us stopped to watch the ceremony on the giant TV screens dotting the nation's mall. It seemed like an eternity but eventually the helicopter blades started rotating, and hundreds of thousands of people started chanting "LIFT, LIFT!!" Finally, it did, to tumultuous applause.

  But then the helicopter went off of the TV screens and emerged over the dome of the Capitol directly above us. The crowd went crazy and started jumping up and down and waving wildly. To George W. Bush it probably looked like the crowd was waving "Good-bye". But on the ground, it was clear the crowd was waiving "good riddance". Then, the copter gone, we walked out onto the familiar sidewalks of First Avenue. And although the streets of DC looked the same, the world felt completely different.

   I'm a big fan of the prog rock group Jethro Tull (the one thing I share with Dick Cheney). One of my favorite Tull songs is entitled "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day". As I walked down Mass. Ave, looking for the Obama Lava Lamp I promised to buy my daughter, I thought of a line from that song. "Do you ever get to feeling that...everybody's on the stage and it seems like you're the only person sitting in the audience?" Well today, even though I wasn't literally on the stage (thanks to some particularly aggressive and well-armed secret service agents), I felt that I joined the entire nation (even Turtle) on the stage, standing with our new President. As we skate away on the thin ice of this new administration, I know that I wouldn't have missed this day for the world.

 

-Daylin

 

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