A front row seat (figuratively) to history.

I hope you enjoy my long commentary...I'm just going to type a stream of thoughts here, so whoever ends up reading this whole thing probably deserves a prize.

Saturday - Wake up time was 3:30am in order to scoop up Joy and catch our 7am non-stop flight to Philly. We had little to no travel issues, except for the fact that while waiting at DIA we sat by a family with three out of control kids...who were annoying. It was too earlier for that type of behavior! Upon arrival to Philly, we scooped up our Hertz with a ton of other folks who realized it was much cheaper to fly into Philly and drive to DC than to attempt to find our way directly to DC. We hopped on 95 South where I remembered the joys of the east coast...you visit so many states in 130 miles! Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, DC and Virginia! We stopped in Baltimore as Joy is moving there in June, so I showed her the inner harbor. What we forgot, however, was that Bmore was a stop on the Obama/Biden train to DC...evidenced by the high parking prices. We headed to find some food and instead encountered some CRAZY marylanders...we weren't quite sure where Obama was, but we were pretty sure he was nearby...we saw tons of people outside watching his stop in Baltimore on TV, even though he was literally within a mile radius. The craziest part is that it was FREEZING in baltimore...I mean, if you are going to watch him on TV, at least do it from the comfort of your living room! I digress though, and after refueling with some crabcakes...headed to DC. We arrived at our lovely host's (Marta and Greg) apartment, grabbed some dinner (I dined on chocolate cake and Yuengling...yum) and called it a day.

Sunday - Sunday was the day of the "We are One" concert at the Lincoln Monument. We weren't quite sure what the set-up or crowd was going to be like, so we got up and headed into the city about 10am. Upon arrival at Foggy Bottom metro (where we had our first Obama flea market encounter, and Joy even bought a Reagan button) we quickly realized there would be a ton of folks and we wanted to get in close (afterall, we didn't want to re-live the crazy "watch it on tv from a mile away" moment from Baltimore). I realized at this point that I had an intense desire to be on foreign television, however, that dream never came true...

We ended up with pretty decent seats, considering the view of the actual performers was blocked for pretty much everyone thanks to the need to televise the event...we only had 4 hours to show time! It was pretty darn cold too, and I now have a new appreciation for handwarmers. We considered this a dry run for what to wear to the swearing in and my Tuesday, I had perfected my "standing outside for hours in cold weather" outfit). We didn't bring in anything, since we didn't really know what the rules were...apparently you could pretty much bring in anything you wanted, so luckily they had a refreshment tent. We waited in line for about 45 minutes for some food, chatting with some lovely folks from Missouri. As we were approaching the front of the line, I heard some lady seriously wondering if the hot chocolate was any good...she kept asking people. I was like "lady, its 15 degrees, and the hot chocolate is $2, I think taste is the least of your worries at this point." Just a note, however, that the hot chocolate was delicious! About an hour before showtime Ellen and Elmo entertained the crowd...then, it was showtime!

The concert was AMAZING. A literal "whose who" of pop culture, not to mention the Obamas and Bidens. I mean, come on, Denzel, Usher, Will.I.Am, Mary J, Beyonce, Tom Hanks, U2, the list goes on! The best parts in my humble opinion were Mary J. singing "Lean on Me", Garth Brooks (imagine singing American Pie and "getting a little louder now" with 1 million people...so much fun) and of course, who can beat U2...oh, and I can't forget Josh Groban, who I have a little crush on. Jamie Foxx's impersonation of Obama was classic as well, we thought they had cut to a tape it was so good! A once-in-a-lifetime experience for sure.

After Beyonce closed the show, we meandered out towards the metro only to discover that we couldn't even get within a block of the station thanks to the masses. All of us were tired and hungry, so we headed to the only place where we knew there would be food, at that was the GW student union. We stood in line for about 40 minutes for Potbelly sandwiches, which were DELICIOUS...and I should have ordered 2 for sure. Once we made it back to Clarendon, we bought a bottle of wine at 7-11 (I LOVE city living) and watched the show on TV with Marta. Malia taking pictures with her camera was perhaps the most adorable thing ever...

Monday - Monday was really the only day we had to do other stuff...so of course, I headed to the zoo to see my pandas. When I was living in DC I was a "giant panda interpreter" at the zoo, so I really consider these pandas mine...this was probably the only thing that I missed from living there. They had since built an amazing new habitat for the pandas, and all three were out to say hello! I love them! Joy is a big hippo fan, so we visited the hippos as well.

Afterwards, we headed into the city and wala, right outside the exit at Metro Center, was COSI! I love cosi, their tomato, basil, mozz sandwich makes me so happy. It was about this time I began my qwest for a button that said "I was there" which proved to take up most of the rest of the day...we began meandering to the mall, stopping at multiple Obama stores. Now would be a good time to mention that the stuff they were selling was amazing...Obama was everywhere and on everything...even bedazzled on everything...I had already purchased a sweatshirt, and we discovered this amazing Obama flea market where I got $5 obama sunglasses and the most amazing $5 obama belt. Such classic souveniers. Our main purpose this afternoon was to head to the Rayburn House Office building to pick up our tickets from Diana DeGette...we stopped to take photos along the mall (there were SO MANY people out and about!) and headed to the building where we discovered a horrendous line...I'm not sure why we didn't think there would be one, but it honestly never crossed my mind. About 20 minutes in, a woman with a yellow sign reading "Diana DeGette" walked by...Joy and I reacted like she was Justin Timberlake. She said she was collecting all of the Coloradans to skip the line...AWESOME! The people around us were so intruigued: "Who is Diana DeGette?" they asked. "Is that her?" Sure enough, that woman, Deb Parsons, gathered up about 20 of my colorado peeps and we cut the security line. It was one of the most awesome things ever...Diana DeGette officially has a voter for life with me, because she definitely cares about her constituents. We headed to her office, visited with the Congresswoman, picked up our tickets and ate a few cookies. We still had plenty of daylight to spare, so we headed to the Smithsonian American History Museum (after a brief pitstop to be in the crown on msnbc and for me to take a picture with an cardboard obama). The museum was obviously swarming with people so we just visited the famous Star Spangled Banner and hung out with G Dubs (that would be George Washington) and Lincoln...it was nice of them to invite the former presidents to this humble occasion.

No trip is complete without a visit to the White House and a street hot dog hit the spot before heading home to get gussied up for the gala.

We went to the Young and Powerful for Obama gala and it was ok, a good reason to go out, but generally pretty lame. We had a fun group of people though, so we had a good time. I was definitely glad I kept my outfit to under $100 :) We headed home about 1:30am for a 5:30am wake up call for the BIG DAY...

Tuesday - Today was the day we'd been working towards for almost 2 years. I was so excited...the cockatils from the night before made me have a solid three hours worth of sleep, but I jumped out of bed to get ready to head out. We were on the metro by about 5:45am, pockets stuffed with hand warmers, cell phones, cameras, pop tarts and granola bars. The metro was already very busy and very backed up, so a 25 minute trip ended up taking one hour and 15 minutes...we emerged at Capitol South Metro station at about 7am...we chatted with a very nice family from Virginia on the train, which helped calm my nerves a bit.

Little did we know the next 4 hours were going to be the most painful of my life. We were in a SEA of people...trying to follow the signs to the Silver ticket gate (it should be known that silver tickets were the worst of the tickets, but tickets none-the-less so we *thought* we were lucky).

Let me playback my twitter comments from that morning:

CHAOS 4:19 AM Jan 20th from twitterrific
No seriously..,the govt are not certified event planners and perhaps they should hire me!!!!! 4:37 AM Jan 20th
I kind of think ticket holders are getting SCREWED...trying to stay positive though! 4:40 AM Jan 20th
Making progress...I think!!! 4:58 AM
(Then my lovely ATT service died)

I was very prophetic in my "ticket holders are getting SCREWED" comment...because yes friends, we almost didn't make it in. I was freaking out...FREAKING out...especially when I almost lost my camera. There were no officials around communicating to us for FOUR HOURS. We were in a mass of people, visible on the satellite photo taken of the event at 11:19am, and at one point I thought I was going to get crushed between people and a parking meter. Everyone around us was very zen about the whole situation, putting their trust in the government, I of course, knew better...there was no reason that this was happening...everyone thought it was for "security" but it was a DEBAUCLE. We finally, at about 10:45am, made it to where we could see what was going on, and what we saw, was that there was pretty much no way we were going to make it in...then, a few of us "revolutionaries" decided to take matters into our own hands and break through a security barrier and make a break for it (we were walking calmly), until we saw cops finally doing their job and telling us to go back, so we ducked under police tape and into another line. It wasn't long past that that we reached the security check points, which were, HALF EMPTY. Yes friends, their people flow was so horrible that they weren't even utilizing all of the security check points. The TSA agents looked bored...Joy and I quickly ran to the very end where the empty lines were, and I believe I ran up screaming "FRISK ME" and boy, let me tell you, they barely even touched me before letting me in...we waited in line to apparently not even get screened...I was wearing about 20 layers and they didn't even make me unzip my coat! Argh!

Oh, I should go back and mention that right before we went rogue and broke the security barrier, this mother was standing there with her about 9-year-old daughter who obviously wanted to come with us when the mom said "No, we're going to follow the rules." This is when I would have taken the opportunity to teach another lesson, and that is, in the end, you can only take care of yourself. If you blindly trust others, especially the government, you're going to miss it. They would have too, if they (according to what I read) ended up just opening the flood gates and letting all of our silver ticket compadres without even pretending to go through security like I did.

Oh, and let me say this other piece of CRAZINESS...they never once checked for our tickets.

It is an utter disgrace that there were thousands of ticket holders, the silver folks who gave up and the purple and blue people, who never made it in. I read that this guy Gabe, who literally was a state director for the campaign here in Colo. and Wyoming (we did some campaigning together) never made it in.

I'm going to stop ranting now, but if the Feds are reading this, I'm available for the job of "director of inauguration logistics" in four years. I'll even pay you (in taxes) to have the job.

Ok, back to the swearing in...we again ran through the crowds up to where the silver tickets were valid for (again, never checked for tickets) and got there just as the dignitaries (former presidents, etc.) were coming down...we decided to stand to the left right along the reflecting pool because there was no one blocking our views...

I'm not going to lie...the whole "getting there" situation put a damper on the experience for me...I thought after watching Oprah I was over it, but now that perhaps I've typed it all out, I'll really be over it. I'm honored to have been there, and truly believe that this president will go down as one of the most important and successful presidents in history...The feeling of joy and hope and change that was displayed by the people in DC last weekend was palpable...it really is a new day in america. All craziness aside, it was an experience of a lifetime...a figurative front row seat to history that I will cherish for the rest of my days.

Some of the speech phrases that gave me chills:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

We made it home on Wednesday with relative ease, although my patience level and willingness to be surrounded by people was at about zero :)

If you made it this far, congrats...I hope it was a good snapshot of what it was like to "be there."