| I was there. |
[Jan. 21st, 2009|12:03 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | DC | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  hopeful | ] |
I had been promising to visit T'eao for a while, and over my long winter break seemed the perfect time. I took the train down Sunday, and we enjoyed a chill day on Monday. We went shopping and ate dinner at the pirate bar. Much fun.
We decided against waking up at 4am since we didn't see much need in going in super early to try to get a great spot just to wait hours out in the cold. I woke up at 7:30 but it took a bit more time before T'eao got up. Our typical morning of event routine of me feeling slightly annoyed by her slow morning routine and her slightly annoyed by my wanting to get going already. We got going I think around 9ish.
T'eao has been hearing ever since I said I was visiting and wanted to do this that this was going to be crazy. Her roomie was totally gleefully mocking. I knew it was going to be nuts, and was prepared for that. But felt it was worth while trying.
We took the Metro which was surprisingly not very crowded. We planned to get off at the Metro Central station, as that was the closest to the Mall, and on the Mall side of the Parade route. Unfortunately, our train was stopped at the New York ave stop, as there was an accident at a station ahead of us...something about someone falling on the tracks. We had to get off the train. T'eao and I decided we were within 2 miles of the mall, it was time to walk it rather than waiting around for who knows how long until the trains were running again.
Much like anime conventions, it was easy enough to figure out where to go by following the crowds. It didn't take long to get towards the edge of the Capital, the NE of the Mall. The atmosphere was excited and carnival like. T'eao wanted a souvenir, so I got us a set of red, white, and blue marte graw beads. Since we were on the wrong side of the parade route, and there was no way to cross it at this point, we couldn't go along the north side of the Mall and had to go the long way around the Capital building. No prob, we figured, and began our trek around the Mall.
Again, following a large number of people. We kept seeing the giant gates for the ticket entry, but no sign of where non-ticketed people could enter the Mall. We kept walking. A few zig zags down some roads trying to get closer to the mall, only to find points of non-entry, either because they were ticketed gates only or they were blocked off or exit-only gates. At one point we got up near the mall, but couldn't get further without back-tracking. We could hear pretty clearly at the spot, but could see nothing. I wanted to continue on, to try to get to the Mall itself, so we pressed on.
As we were passing the Smithsonian, T'eao's back and legs were bothering her and she was starting not to have much fun. Unfortunately, there was no easy way to get to a metro where we were, so we had to continue on towards the Lincoln memorial (aka, the far side of the Mall) to get around to things in any case, so after we rested a little while, we continued. We finally got past the section of ticket only gates, but there was still no way onto the Mall. Then we got stuck in a narrow pathway, where the crowd was THICK. People were packed together, slowly inching forward. Fortunately, this extreme packedness only lasted a little while and we broke free into a more crowd-free area.
We saw people get very creative in their attempts to see. There were people climbing trees, standing on top of garbage dumpsters, buildings, and even porta-potties. T'eao and continued, coming upon the Washington Monument. The crowd around it was THICK, but surprisingly, there was a break in the crowd on the Lincoln Memorial side of the Monument. We were able to get onto the Mall easily at this point. As we had gotten past the crowded part, we were able to hear the begin of the ceremony on load speakers. We reached the Mall and were able to see one of the Jumbo-trans just in time to see the swearing in. It was great. Great, optimistic energy. We decided we really wanted to get off the Mall before the ceremony fully ended since there were so many people there, we wanted to beat them away. We left while listening to the president's speach.
Smartly, we decided against going to the closest metro stop, and walking to a slightly more distant one, we were able to not only quickly and easily board a metro train, but also get a seat. We got back to T'eao's apartment in plenty of time to see the parade on the TV. There was some napping, some parade watching. It was really nice.
We figured out we walked at least 5.2 miles, likely a little more. Things would have been easier and slightly less walking had we been able to get continue on the Metro originally until Metro North, but it turned out ok.
And I was part of the 2 million people on the Mall. I was there. |
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sore
flirty
satisfied
amused
nerdy
pleased
quixotic
geeky
crappy
discontent
creative
nauseated
exhausted
pissed off
busy