Jan 22: Elise and my Inauguration Day adventure -- part 1
Note: I was going to just post one big entry, but I timed out of my blog software and lost a chunk that I had written. So, I'm just posting what I didn't lost as part one. Part two should be later today. --ben
On Monday, January 19th, we lucked into a pair of inauguration tickets. Elise was a contestant in an annual Martin Luther King day oratorical contest. She had won at the school level, but didn't win at the regional level. On MLK day, there was a HUGE ceremony where she represented her school and we got to hear the six finalists (3 middle schoolers & 3 from high school) give their speeches. A the ceremony, they recognized a few local dignitaries including our recently-elected congressman, Gerry Connelly, who got up and spoke for a few minutes. When he was done, he walked over to the president of the event, chatted for a moment, and then came back to the microphone. He said "There are 30 contestants in this contest, so I am giving 30 tickets to tomorrow's inauguration." Of course, the place went wild, but I was wondering if he meant 30 pairs of tickets. One ticket wouldn't do Elise much good, as we wouldn't send our 11-year-old up to DC alone, of course. When she got the ticket at the end of the ceremony, it was indeed a single ticket for a single person. So, it was a nice gesture, but not too useful.
After the ceremony, we took Elise to a celebratory lunch at Chili's. She wanted to go to Olive Garden, because they have chocolate mints, but we convinced her that the food at Chili's was better, so she agreed to go there. While sitting at the table, Elise says "look, there's the guy!" We turned and lo and behold, there was Gerry Connelly leaving Chili's. So, I jump up and run outside after him. I explained to him that Elise was a contestant at the oratorical contest, that she was so grateful for the ticket and would love to go but couldn't without a parent and asked him if he had any more tickets. He said he may have one more in the car. We walked over to his car and he gave me his last ticket.
We obviously couldn't believe it. I mean, there were no tickets to be had, so it was completely lucky that we even got one, but then to run in to him at Chili's and get another?!?! It was crazy. We were pretty giddy all through lunch. After lunch, we headed home and started planning for the next day.
On Tuesday, we were up by 4 a.m. and out the door by 4:30. Just past Newington, we hit traffic that was backing up for the Springfield Metro station. It turns out that we should've skipped the Springfield station and driven up to the Van Dorn station, which was almost empty. I assumed that all of Metro would be crazy, so we stuck it out at Springfield. We ended up parking at Springfield mall and walking about a mile to the metro; even walking a mile, we still beat the people we were driving next to by 20 or 30 minutes. We were hoping to be on the train by 5, but it was 6:30 before we took our seats in the bizarely empty last car (the middle cars were packed, but no one walked to the back except us & one other lady). We switched from the blue line to the yellow line at the National Airport stop and took the yellow in to L'enfant Plaza where we got off.
L'enfant metro was insane. They were regulating the flow of people leaving the station, stopping them at the gates to let the previous group get up the escalators. I'm not sure why a bottleneck at the gates was better than a bottleneck at the escalators, though. Here are a couple photos I found on flickr showing the L'enfant madness: Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3. Photo 3 shows the exit we used and you can see that people are stopped at the gates. This was the worst part of the day for us. It took an hour of being squished to get out of the station.
Here's a pdf showing the various ticketed sections:doc-2009-map.pdf I'll refer to this going forward.
Once outside, though, everything pretty smoothly. We walked in the general direction of the gate for silver ticket holders which was on 3rd and Independence, right next to the Native Americans Museum. As we got to the Air and Space Museum we were pointed at the line for silver ticket holders which stretched back several more blocks. It moved quickly, though and by 9 or so, we got to and through the security checkpoint. We started making our way forward to get as close as possible.
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Tell Elise congratulations on being one of the winners on the MLK contest. That's terrific. And how exciting for both of you to get to attend the inauguration. The crowds are amazing, but just what you'd expect. I think I would have felt claustrophobic that far underground smushed in like a sardine, but I'll bet there was a charge in the air what with everybody so pumped. What a memorable occasion for you to share with your daughter.
It was a little claustrophobic, but, like you say, everyone was excited and in a great mood. Everyone knew what to expect and took it pretty much in stride. After they'd stop the crowd again, about 10 minutes would pass and then the place would erupt in a chant of 'Let us Out! Let us Out!' And, let me tell you, it was a loud chant with that many people in an enclosed space. But no one was really angry about it, just a little annoyed and confused as to why they were doing it.
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Note: I was going to just post one big entry, but I timed out of my blog software and lost a chunk that I had written. So, I'm just posting what I didn't lost as part one. Part two should be later today. --ben
On Monday, January 19th, we lucked into a pair of inauguration tickets. Elise was a contestant in an annual Martin Luther King day oratorical contest. She had won at the school level, but didn't win at the regional level. On MLK day, there was a HUGE ceremony where she represented her school and we got to hear the six finalists (3 middle schoolers & 3 from high school) give their speeches. A the ceremony, they recognized a few local dignitaries including our recently-elected congressman, Gerry Connelly, who got up and spoke for a few minutes. When he was done, he walked over to the president of the event, chatted for a moment, and then came back to the microphone. He said "There are 30 contestants in this contest, so I am giving 30 tickets to tomorrow's inauguration." Of course, the place went wild, but I was wondering if he meant 30 pairs of tickets. One ticket wouldn't do Elise much good, as we wouldn't send our 11-year-old up to DC alone, of course. When she got the ticket at the end of the ceremony, it was indeed a single ticket for a single person. So, it was a nice gesture, but not too useful.
After the ceremony, we took Elise to a celebratory lunch at Chili's. She wanted to go to Olive Garden, because they have chocolate mints, but we convinced her that the food at Chili's was better, so she agreed to go there. While sitting at the table, Elise says "look, there's the guy!" We turned and lo and behold, there was Gerry Connelly leaving Chili's. So, I jump up and run outside after him. I explained to him that Elise was a contestant at the oratorical contest, that she was so grateful for the ticket and would love to go but couldn't without a parent and asked him if he had any more tickets. He said he may have one more in the car. We walked over to his car and he gave me his last ticket.
We obviously couldn't believe it. I mean, there were no tickets to be had, so it was completely lucky that we even got one, but then to run in to him at Chili's and get another?!?! It was crazy. We were pretty giddy all through lunch. After lunch, we headed home and started planning for the next day.
On Tuesday, we were up by 4 a.m. and out the door by 4:30. Just past Newington, we hit traffic that was backing up for the Springfield Metro station. It turns out that we should've skipped the Springfield station and driven up to the Van Dorn station, which was almost empty. I assumed that all of Metro would be crazy, so we stuck it out at Springfield. We ended up parking at Springfield mall and walking about a mile to the metro; even walking a mile, we still beat the people we were driving next to by 20 or 30 minutes. We were hoping to be on the train by 5, but it was 6:30 before we took our seats in the bizarely empty last car (the middle cars were packed, but no one walked to the back except us & one other lady). We switched from the blue line to the yellow line at the National Airport stop and took the yellow in to L'enfant Plaza where we got off.
L'enfant metro was insane. They were regulating the flow of people leaving the station, stopping them at the gates to let the previous group get up the escalators. I'm not sure why a bottleneck at the gates was better than a bottleneck at the escalators, though. Here are a couple photos I found on flickr showing the L'enfant madness: Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3. Photo 3 shows the exit we used and you can see that people are stopped at the gates. This was the worst part of the day for us. It took an hour of being squished to get out of the station.
Here's a pdf showing the various ticketed sections:doc-2009-map.pdf I'll refer to this going forward.
Once outside, though, everything pretty smoothly. We walked in the general direction of the gate for silver ticket holders which was on 3rd and Independence, right next to the Native Americans Museum. As we got to the Air and Space Museum we were pointed at the line for silver ticket holders which stretched back several more blocks. It moved quickly, though and by 9 or so, we got to and through the security checkpoint. We started making our way forward to get as close as possible.
On Monday, January 19th, we lucked into a pair of inauguration tickets. Elise was a contestant in an annual Martin Luther King day oratorical contest. She had won at the school level, but didn't win at the regional level. On MLK day, there was a HUGE ceremony where she represented her school and we got to hear the six finalists (3 middle schoolers & 3 from high school) give their speeches. A the ceremony, they recognized a few local dignitaries including our recently-elected congressman, Gerry Connelly, who got up and spoke for a few minutes. When he was done, he walked over to the president of the event, chatted for a moment, and then came back to the microphone. He said "There are 30 contestants in this contest, so I am giving 30 tickets to tomorrow's inauguration." Of course, the place went wild, but I was wondering if he meant 30 pairs of tickets. One ticket wouldn't do Elise much good, as we wouldn't send our 11-year-old up to DC alone, of course. When she got the ticket at the end of the ceremony, it was indeed a single ticket for a single person. So, it was a nice gesture, but not too useful.
After the ceremony, we took Elise to a celebratory lunch at Chili's. She wanted to go to Olive Garden, because they have chocolate mints, but we convinced her that the food at Chili's was better, so she agreed to go there. While sitting at the table, Elise says "look, there's the guy!" We turned and lo and behold, there was Gerry Connelly leaving Chili's. So, I jump up and run outside after him. I explained to him that Elise was a contestant at the oratorical contest, that she was so grateful for the ticket and would love to go but couldn't without a parent and asked him if he had any more tickets. He said he may have one more in the car. We walked over to his car and he gave me his last ticket.
We obviously couldn't believe it. I mean, there were no tickets to be had, so it was completely lucky that we even got one, but then to run in to him at Chili's and get another?!?! It was crazy. We were pretty giddy all through lunch. After lunch, we headed home and started planning for the next day.
On Tuesday, we were up by 4 a.m. and out the door by 4:30. Just past Newington, we hit traffic that was backing up for the Springfield Metro station. It turns out that we should've skipped the Springfield station and driven up to the Van Dorn station, which was almost empty. I assumed that all of Metro would be crazy, so we stuck it out at Springfield. We ended up parking at Springfield mall and walking about a mile to the metro; even walking a mile, we still beat the people we were driving next to by 20 or 30 minutes. We were hoping to be on the train by 5, but it was 6:30 before we took our seats in the bizarely empty last car (the middle cars were packed, but no one walked to the back except us & one other lady). We switched from the blue line to the yellow line at the National Airport stop and took the yellow in to L'enfant Plaza where we got off.
L'enfant metro was insane. They were regulating the flow of people leaving the station, stopping them at the gates to let the previous group get up the escalators. I'm not sure why a bottleneck at the gates was better than a bottleneck at the escalators, though. Here are a couple photos I found on flickr showing the L'enfant madness: Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3. Photo 3 shows the exit we used and you can see that people are stopped at the gates. This was the worst part of the day for us. It took an hour of being squished to get out of the station.
Here's a pdf showing the various ticketed sections:doc-2009-map.pdf I'll refer to this going forward.
Once outside, though, everything pretty smoothly. We walked in the general direction of the gate for silver ticket holders which was on 3rd and Independence, right next to the Native Americans Museum. As we got to the Air and Space Museum we were pointed at the line for silver ticket holders which stretched back several more blocks. It moved quickly, though and by 9 or so, we got to and through the security checkpoint. We started making our way forward to get as close as possible.
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Tell Elise congratulations on being one of the winners on the MLK contest. That's terrific. And how exciting for both of you to get to attend the inauguration. The crowds are amazing, but just what you'd expect. I think I would have felt claustrophobic that far underground smushed in like a sardine, but I'll bet there was a charge in the air what with everybody so pumped. What a memorable occasion for you to share with your daughter.
It was a little claustrophobic, but, like you say, everyone was excited and in a great mood. Everyone knew what to expect and took it pretty much in stride. After they'd stop the crowd again, about 10 minutes would pass and then the place would erupt in a chant of 'Let us Out! Let us Out!' And, let me tell you, it was a loud chant with that many people in an enclosed space. But no one was really angry about it, just a little annoyed and confused as to why they were doing it.
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