;)
Margie is in blue, smiling at the right. The young woman in the "Obama" stocking cap who peeks around the man in the orange coat - that's Lisa.
The first train to leave the Metro station nearest to us was scheduled for 4:20 AM and I wanted to be on it. I set my cell phone alarm for 3:20, knowing that I would wake up at least 20 minutes before it was scheduled to go off. So I woke up at 3:00, took a quick shower, and then rousted Margie and Lisa from their sleep.
I knew that by DC standards, the weather was going to be exceptionally cold and so I wanted everybody to wear their thermal underwear. However, as we began to dress, Margie and I discovered that our thermal underwear had been packed in the bag that American Airlines had lost for us - except for one lightweight pair of pants for me. Fortunately, Lisa's thermals had all arrived safely.
So I put on the light thermal pants and pulled a pair of slacks over that. Margie did have a pair of panty hose that had made it to DC, so she wore those as a substitute for her thermals. On top, I put on a cotton shirt over a cotton t-shirt and pulled a cotton sweatshirt over both. Over this, I would wear a light jacket.
Cotton - the worst kind of material for cold weather that one can wear. Cotton catches your sweat, holds it next to you and wicks your body-heat away from you. Yet, in the wake of the lost bag, cotton was the only option.
Oh well. I'm an Alaskan who has often camped out in bitter cold weather. Whatever discomfort I had to face, to witness history, I could happily deal with it. But I was worried about Margie.
We boarded the Metro at Friendship Heights, headed for L'Enfant Plaza and found the crowd to be surprisingly light - until we reached the very next station. When the doors opened, people poured in - and they would continue to do so at each stop until no more would fit. It was hot in the train car and I began to sweat.
The gentleman above joined us at an early stop. He brandished an American flag with an image of Barack Obama emblazoned on it. "I'm so happy!" he sang, joyously, "I'm from Africa, living in America, Africa, living in America, Barack Obama, I'm so happy..."
He sang too of his father, in Sierra Leone, who he wished could be here, in America, to celebrate this wonderful day. "I'm so happy, in America, from Africa. Barack Obama! Africa, America. I'm so happy."
I could detect nothing but happiness, joy and goodwill anywhere. Smiles abounded throughout the car, people of all race and background laughed and mingled with those nearby. There was no tension, not between races, not between individuals; good will abounded.
The day was off to a good start.
;)
We change trains at Metro Station.
We who traveled down in the Metro flowed like rivers of humanity through the concrete channels that lace the earth beneath Washington, D.C. toward the grand confluence where we would soon converge into a sea of two million that would cover the entire National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol.
;)
One river of humanity flows outward through the metro gates.
;)
And then the flow goes up and out of the Metro at L'Enfant Plaza.
;)
Back in Wasilla, I had been thrilled when I received an email from the Presidential Inaugural Committee informing me that I had been awarded credentials for two press passes to cover the swearing in ceremony. While I knew that this would give me access to the most prime spots that would be taken up by Time, Newsweek and the like, I had envisioned that it would still put me close enough that my my 400 mm lens would be able to discern the faces of principle characters, who would then be recognizable in my pictures.
When I picked up the passes, I was a bit disconcerted to see that they were limited to the National Mall, where the two million would gather.
I was not certain what advantage such passes gave me, other than perhaps freedom of movement back and forth between various sections within the Mall.
After exiting the Metro, we soon found ourselves swept by the river toward the Seventh Street entrance.
I wanted to go against the current, to work my way toward an entrance closer to the action than 7th Street, but once in the flow, we had no choice but to be swept along with the current. The crowd pressed against us from all sides to surge forward relentlessly in one direction, that direction being opposite to the one I wanted to go. As I felt the force and power in the bodies pressing against mine, I suddenly understood how it is that people who fall in moving crowds are sometimes trampled to death.
Soon, we were on the mall, making our way forward toward the Capitol building.
;)
As we drew near to the foremost fence of the section we had been carried to, Margie slipped off to the side, where there were some trees. She said she would stake her ground there and meet us afterwards. Lisa and I stayed in the center of the crowd and, wielding our press passes like machetes, slashed our way through the crowd toward the front fence. It was my intent to find a way out and to use our press passes to move out of this section altogether and into the next, that section marking what I interpreted as being the limit of our passes.
As we pushed toward the fence, the crowd grew more and more compressed, until even our press passes were useless to cut through. Still determined to get into a better position, I led Lisa off to the the side and from there then to the front fence. A policeman there told us that there were some bleachers for credentialled media a ways behind us and off on the other side of the mall.
I decided to check out these bleachers and from there to find out the exact limitations of our passes.
So, under the dark skies of the pre-dawn, Lisa and I started working our way diagonally backwards through the same crowd that had swept us forward.
As the crowd became ever more compressed, it grew ever more difficult to move through it at all. Here and there, groups of shivering people were sitting and even lying on blankets placed upon the frozen ground. In the dark, they could not be seen until I would find myself tripping over them.
Finally, we hit a point where it was not possible to move at all, not in any direction. Bodies pressed against me from all sides - and I made certain that one of those bodies was Lisa. I felt as though I was going to trip and fall. I knew that once the people sitting and lying upon the ground rose to their feet, the crowd would loosen a bit, but for now, we simply could not move.
We were stuck. And we were markedly further back than we had been with our initial advance.
"Okay, Lisa," I said. "It looks like this is our spot."
"This is the 3:00 AM crowd," someone standing nearby told someone else. "We are the people who got up at 3:00 AM for Barack Obama!"
For a long time, I took no pictures, because it was too dark and I did not want to use flash. I had not even brought flash. I wondered if I could bear it, to stand immobile for hours in the midst of a crowd of people pushed tight against me from all sides. My cotton clothes, wet with sweat, had begun to wick the heat away from me.
After we had stood in such a manner for quite some time, we heard a male voice shout out, "Can you believe it? It's 6:30 in the morning and its pitch black outside!"
Coming from Alaska, Lisa was greatly amused by that statement.
The ceremony was scheduled to begin at 11:30 AM.
Next: The long, cold, wait.