That’s all we get Sands?
Saucony hangs his head a little disappointed.
My bad dawg. I was Just lookin' forward to some of that KCET, Charlie Rose, in-depth analysis and perspective you always lace us with. That all.
Word. I was expecting a 5,000 word joint minimum. You set the bar man, don't let us down now.
OK it's like a week later but better late than never right? My hours lately have been killer so you'll have to excuse the tardiness. I'm still recuperating from 7 hours in the frigged cold.
OK, so I got down there on Saturday night. Caught up with old classmates and what have you. Parties everywhere. Rejoicing in the streets. I stepped off the Amtrak and automatically felt the vibe in D.C. It was like being at a family reunion so to speak. People were eerily nice to each other in cramped spaces when typically they would be ready to cuss each other out. If somebody bumped into you during the weekend, they would apologize and smile. There was just a lot of accepted claustrophobia going on.
I tried to avoid the obvious spots like Love and U street as much as possible for the whole weekend and leaned more towards house parties with friends and stuff like that. I figured I would leave the popular spots for the tourists.
On the day of it was a organized military operation:
Up at 0400 hours, on the metro by 0500.
Everybody on the train was smiling, full of positive energy, the whole 9. People started randomly busting out into chants and songs. It was great.
So I finally make it down to downtown DC. My whole group didn't have tickets so we had to break off from each other at some point and rush to set up our camps. I went to my ticket area and was pleased to actually see mad police officers out directing folks to where they should be. It ran smoothly. And then I waited from about 6am until about 7:45am when they decided to open the gates.
Oh, I almost forgot: milk crates! Our team decided to take Milk Crates with us to the inauguration and are we ever glad that we did, because when everybody else was standing for those 7+ hours, I was sitting down giving the old feet a break.
So I rushed into the "security" gate. It lasted all of 10 seconds. The guy patted me like two or three times and then I went on my way. Me and my milk crate.
Folks were literally running out of the security check point to go find the best spot to watch it from. I rolled over to a spot with a decent view and posted up on my milk crate and waited. About an hour later I couldn't feel my feet despite my 3 layers of socks. At some point I took my shoes off and started rubbing my feet and then some random elderly white lady came by and gave me some feet warmers and saved my life just like that. That's the type of atmosphere that was going on out there.
I was fairly close to the capital. I could get the details on the screen closest to me whenever somebody was coming out of the main door onto the stage, and then I would look over to the capital and see them actually walking out of the door in real life. Very cool.
When the crowd saw Obama on the screen they went nuts.
When Bush came out he got Booooooed by the crowd. I caught myself laughing at that one. I got it on video.
Then Roberts administered the Oath (the first one) and then the crowd went nuts again.
Then I finally got to hear my first Obama speech in person even after all my volunteering and listening to him on conference calls. It was a surreal experience that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. I'm slowing coming to the realization that our President is Black and that I was there to see him sworn in.
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