Well, not really, but it's a big, big bonus. I live within walking distance from the capitol and the National Mall where many events took place this last weekend.
On Sunday my guests arrived - Paul & Erin Boers (from Goshen), and Ben Friesen (from NYC) and we immediately headed off to the free concert at the Lincoln memorial. We were told that we could bring no bags or chairs or really anything, so Ben wore his entire weekend wardrobe so that he could go straight to the concert without a bag. When we got to security, everyone had bags and chairs, and they were let in. Doh! We met up with three of my coworkers and two of my housemates, and then promptly got separated. It's kind of amazing that we found everyone in the first place. It helps to have a 6'4" man with you. We put Erin's rainbow hat on him (Ben), and just to make sure, had him jump up and down. Sure enough, my housemates found us in the crowd! We were a few hours early, and there were already a lot of people there, but it was surprisingly easy to work our way up to the front. I was in front of the first big screen, and I could see the figures of the famous people as they sang or spoke on stage. They also showed the Obamas on the jumbotron every once in a while. It was cute to see Malia and Sasha take pictures of the stars, or complain to Michelle. There was another girl behind the Obamas who was asleep. I didn't have too high of hopes for the concert, and sure enough, it wasn't that great. I saw a LOT of famous people, but it was kind of like watching them on TV, since I could only see their figures on stage. There were a lot of dry speeches made by comic actors. (Who wrote those terrible speeches and why did they get comic actors to deliver them?) My favorite song was "Higher Ground" performed by Stevie Wonder, Usher, and Shakira (although I didn't realize it was Shakira at the time). Most of the performers did duets or trios, but U2 and Garth Brooks each sang like 3 songs by themselves. With such a stellar lineup, why feature these two? I think Stevie Wonder should get more credit than that.
The concert took up most of our day on Sunday. We were worn out after standing in the cold. On Monday, we walked down to the National Mall again to check out the preparations. We weren't the only ones with that idea. People milled and took pictures as the sound check blasted. We went to a Smithsonian (Natural History?), which was clogged with people too. After about four hours we were spent. It was another "short" day in the sense that we weren't out for long but we were bushed.
Tuesday was the big day. We were planning to leave around 8:30 when we got a frantic phone call from housemate Carly at 7:45 (I'm surprised her call got through, because the networks were busy most of the day). She said "come to the Mall right now!! They're closing off entrances because it's so packed!" So we threw on the layers (I knew there was a reason I packed my snow pants!), stuffed egg bake and bread in our pockets, and took off. We were going to try the subway, but fortunately decided not to. People who got on the subway ended up spending two hours to get three stops down. Some people took the subway all the way in the opposite direction to board the one they wanted. All weekend we were expecting the metro to be overloaded and craziness everywhere, but it really didn't hit until Tuesday. When we started walking, there was a steady stream of people that only got bigger the closer we got. Some streets were so clogged that we had to keep taking detours. Eventually we ran into the highway, which was also clogged up. Not with cars, mind you, with people. I have never seen such a thing. We pushed our way past on the on-ramp and started walking in the direction people were coming from. We went up a hill and climbed a fence to get to an overpass, which got us past the "traffic" jam. Here was our one casualty - Erin ripped her pants on the fence - an inauguration day memento.
Finally we got to the spot we had staked out the day before - the Washington monument. We were so far away from the capitol that we didn't even have to go through security checkpoints. The great thing about our spot was that we were on a slight hill, so we could see the screens and the capitol building in the background. The bad thing was that the speakers at that spot were pretty quiet. We could hear the one behind us (and off by 3 seconds) better. I was so hot from the frantic walking. That lasted about 2 seconds and then I was cold. The concert from Sunday was rebroadcast on the jumbotrons, and people danced along to keep warm. When the ceremony finally started, it was kind of hard to take it seriously. I kept expecting to get hit with emotion, but that didn't really happen. While there were many, many people there (2 million?), from the Lincoln memorial behind us to the capitol in front of us, we weren't that packed. It didn't sound like a huge crowd cheering, so we usually didn't cheer very long. I couldn't believe when Obama took his oath that a new presidency was underway. It happened so fast! The majority of the ceremony was people walking onto the stage. I'm glad I was there, though. I witnessed history, and every day it's sinking in a little more that we have a new president.
After the ceremony, we climbed up on a short fence and looked out over all the people. The biggest spectacle might have been the sheer amount of people. Either that or all the Obama paraphernalia. There doesn't seem to be an item that you can't find an Obama version of. Action figures, light switches, buttons - I wish I had made a list of all the amazing gear. Once again we were worn out from our few hours outdoors as we let the crowd sweep us home.
