Tuesday, January 20, 2009

2009 Inauguration - A Chilly Adventure

What a day! It started at 5:30am as David and I headed down to the DC mall area to watch the inauguration and to meet up with Greg.

We stood on the mall from about 7:00am till 11:30am, when the festivities began.

The crowd was in a good mood, and was generally fun to hang out with. We were all a bit chilly, but were layered enough that none of us suffered too bad in the 20 degree weather.

We could see the Capitol off in the distance, but watched the ceremony itself on the jumbotron. So, while the view wasn't that impressive, the crowds and energy more than made up for it.

The only hostility came out was when Bush took the stage. There were definite boos, and even a chant of Naahh, Naahhh, Nahhh, Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye. Even Jimmy Carter got a loud applause. Of course, Clinton got a rousing greeting from the crowd.

Trying to get out of the city was a little trickier than arriving. There seemed to be a lack of crowd control as the masses tried to cross the street, ending up with a thick mess of people pushing in different directions. But even that passed, and we made it out of the city pretty uneventfully.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience. One I plan to never repeat, but still wonderful. Here are some photos:

2 comments:

  1. we were there too, it was amazing... we didn't leave till around 7am and some how managed to get on the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. I'll be posting a link on my blog later to our photos as well as a recording of the inaugural address I recorded on my G1....

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  2. How could we have missed you?! :-)

    I checked out your photos on your blog - they look awesome. Well done.

    -Ben

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