With the temperatures barely poking their big toe into the double digits for the last few days, we awoke on Sunday with a pleasant surprise of 30 degrees. Wooohooo! Still, the long johns needed to be christened. So I layered up in a fashion only befitting a SmartWool advertisement - midweight baselayer pants, midweight baselayer top, knee-high socks, regular socks. Sexy.
The pleasant surprise of the "warm" temperatures was matched by our elatedness of strolling onto an empty train a few minutes after arriving at the station. Off to a good start!
For weeks on end, the blogs and news outlets have been abuzz with speculation about how DC was going to eff this one up. Providing a place of relief for the millions descending upon the District was a pretty popular one. So it was good to see that DC sufficiently squelched that fear. Please picture this line extending the length of the Mall on either side as well as the perimeter of any adjacent memorial, point of interest, and in some cases just any old intersection.
The reflecting skating rink became our home for the next 8 hours, as we settled in on the side of a little hill to the left of the memorial.
Everyone was pretty stoked to be a part of these days of celebration leading up to the historic event on Tuesday.
The buttons and posters and scarves and earrings and bags and hundreds of other Obama inscribed shit was aplenty.
But mostly it was just really freaking cold.
We saw flags waved proudly for the United States of America.
And our neighbors to the North. The guy sitting in front of me traveled from London to partake in the celebration. As the speeches applauded the US defecting from it's oppressive governing body and declaring independence, I had to wonder what reaction that conjured up in a Brit.
So we sat and stood and in some cases slept awaiting the big show.
After a few hours of sitting I was reminded that there was probably a steady stream that had come in behind us, and I stood to see a sea of faces that became tiny little (oh digital girl, the only word I turn to here is pixel) specs as they surrounded the Washington Monument and extended past that. (if you're not so savvy on the DC geography, that's really far)
Considering we strolled in only about 3 or so hours before the show, we lucked out with a really great spot surrounded by fun people.
To appease the crowd's ADD, we were fed little morsels of entertainment over the time, including this really nice montage to the song American Prayer.
...and eventually. "Ladies and gentlemen, our President Elect, Mr. Barack Obama and Michelle Obama"
"Oh-bah-mah! ... Oh-bah-mah! ... Oh-bah-mah!" (oh yea, and Joe and Jill Biden)
The show flowed from speech to song to speech to collaboration, with every name being a big one. So I only snapped a sampling of my favorite performances. Many other talented performance and audio artists, but I wanted to enjoy the show in person rather than through my camera lens. That and a jumba-tron screen is only so exciting.“Come on up for the rising” –The Boss
“Shower the people you love with love” –James Taylor
“love is sunshine...oh yes...make it rain” –John Legend
“Little pink houses for you and I” – John Mellencamp
Queen Latifa introduced the story of Marian Anderson who sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after being denied to sing at the concert hall. Leading into Josh Groban also singing My Country Tis of Thee with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington.
“let your soul gravitate to the love and we’ll feel alright” –Will.i.am
“let’s get together and feel alright” –Sheryl Crow
“drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry” –Garth Brooks “shout!” –Garth Brooks “and the first thing we look for is the beauty within” – Garth Brooks
“this is a day when artists from around the nation gather to celebrate our history and our future." -Ashley Judd
“people keep on learning” -Usher
“they took your life but they could not take your pride…what more in the name of love” –Bono “you look so beautiful” -Bono
"In the course of our history, only a handful of generations have been asked to confront challenges as serious as the ones we face right now” -Obama
"People who love this country can change it...the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right we do when the moment is hard" -Obama
"Thread that binds us together in common effort" -Obama ...see - Obama even has love for the fiber world :)
“I saw my people” –Pete Seeger
“as I go walking on freedom highway” –The Boss
And the show wrapped up with a group song led by Beyonce. Gives you the warm and fuzzies for about two seconds until we tried to walk and realized that our feet were completely numb. Not so warm and fuzzy anymore.
"typical DC. Just try anything until the tell you to stop". Some people got creative with trying to get a view of the show. We found this guy back on 17th.
The mass exodus of the area was by far the nuttiest part of the day, and that's not just because we had relations with hundreds of people as we cattle herded ourselves up 17th in search of metro or food, whichever came first.
But with a little detouring around some of the other streets, we beat a lot of the crowd and got on a train further up the line, planting ourselves comfortably into seats on the red line home. Wooo!
I can only imagine that Tuesday is going to be the Magic Kingdom to today's Holy Land Experience - a little central Florida reference for some of you ;) Next time - real food to supplement the powerbars and fruit leathers; more layers even though it's a whole 30 degrees; and maybe even a blanket to sit on.
"catch you on the flipside"
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