Before I leave for Jordan/Egypt tomorrow, I better post the pics from my last adventure: the Obama Inauguration! Here’s my story:

The night before the big day, Chu and I attend a party where the subject of “how to get on the Mall” comes up. Anne mentions that given the location of Chu’s apartment (north of Pennsylvania Ave) crossing the parade route might be tricky. But we look at WaPo’s map and see that there’s a “pedestrian crossover” right my Archives-Memorial. So no problem; but, just in case we decide to wake up earlier…

…at the nearly-inhuman hour of 5:15am. CNN already shows people streaming onto the mall. We head out by 5:50, and are at the 7th and D checkpoint by 6:10am. Supposedly, the checkpoints open at 8am and while there is a massive crowd ahead of us, it’s not too bad. Well, 8am comes and goes and nothing happens. We get news that a water main break had delayed our entrance. (Thanks, DC government!) At 9am, the gates finally open, to much cheering, but people quickly realize that there just aren’t enough guards to check people! Imagine 2,000 people trying to go through 4 airport-security lines. It takes a while. And we’re getting word from Anne, who woke up much later but smartly avoided Pennsylvania avenue, that she’s on the mall no problem, without even being searched by security! It’s pretty clear that despite all of these people waiting at 7th and D to get on the Mall that this is really a parade checkpoint (a distinction no one seems to have deemed worthy to tell us citizens). So at about 9:20 we bail…or try to. By this point, we’re packed in like sardines, and even exiting to the west is really difficult. People have gotten so frustrated that they think that we’re trying to cut them even though we’re moving away from the front of the line. I can only imagine how much trouble there would have been if it had actually been cold instead of the balmy 35 degrees. Anyway, we finally get out and start heading north (away from the mall), then west (parallel to the mall) as quickly as possible.

Avoiding the white house mess, we start heading south at 19th street. And now that I can actually start to enjoy the day, I start taking pictures. We get on the mall with relative ease, and stop on the hill on the Capitol side of the Washington monument. Yes, this is far away from the action, but we wanted to be able to exit the Mall easily as well. And we had a nice view of a jumbotron. We arrived on the Mall around 10am, as they were wrapping up a replay of the Lincolm Memorial concert.

We were all ready for the inauguration ceremony to begin…but then, nothing happened. The procession of elected (and unelected, and formerly elected, and appointed) officials took forever. They didn’t start speaking until around 11:45pm, which made me wonder how they were going to swear Obama in at noon?! The actual inauguration program was incredibly short, so pretty soon we had…

President Obama!

We got home so smoothly that we had turned on the TV to see that Obama’s congressional lunch hadn’t even started yet. (They were quite behind schedule!) After a relaxing afternoon, we got all dolled up for two unofficial galas: the Pennsylvania State Society Gala and the Google party. On our way to the parties, we took the Metro — I always love seeing the tuxes and evening gowns on mass transit:

The Pennsylvania Gala, at the Ritz Carlton was fairly fancy. Senator Spector gave a standard speech, and then Sharon Stone stepped up to the podium for the highlight of the evening. She gave one of the most incoherent and slightly drunken speeches I’ve ever heard. When the audience started snickering out her, she literally “Shhh”ed the crowd (multiple times!) and said “Don’t make me come out there!”

The Google party was much “hipper”. The dance floor was packed. They had cool exhibits on the walls. Celebritties were plentiful (though we didn’t attempt to speak to any of them): Meryl Streep, Sen. Kerry, Ben Affleck. The best part was Wii Bowling! Although Chu and I were beaten my two more experienced young ladies, the Wii served as a great way to meet people without forced mingling. Oh, how I love Google.

And that was it! Hope around 12:30am, January 21, i.e., the first day of the new administration!