Squashed, but not Trampled

Apologies in advance for the almost guaranteed incoherence that will follow. After a scant few hours of sleep on that shoddily constructed air mattress, I got up at 5:00 this morning to brave the metro and get to the inauguration. I know, I know...I just said yesterday that I wasn't going to get up early to get on the National Mall. Turns out I am a sucker for peer pressure, and also more significantly that there is no point in trying to continue sleeping when the other 19 people in the apartment are awake and loudly jazzed up for inauguration festivities. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I joined about a million people today all told, and despite my early departure for the mall, I was still so far away from the Capitol stage that I probably would have been closer, distance-wise, if I'd stayed in bed. But it was really fun.

People are still giddy, still polite, and still friendly to strangers all over town. This is pretty remarkable considering the grueling conditions of today. Never attend an inauguration unless you have no problem whatsoever with the following:

• Claustrophobia. Being packed in with hundreds of other people like sardines with no escape route was the default position of the day.

• Sore feet. Even the most comfortable walking shoes cannot offset 8 straight hours of standing and the miles and miles you have to walk in order to get from place to place. This was even worse than Disneyland, what I was doing a week ago at this time, although that was good training.

• Frozen extremities. My nose and fingers are just slightly but nonetheless permanently damaged. Inaugurations are always in January, and until they change that, a little pain is your price for getting involved.

• Cessation of normal human functioning. The Inauguration Committee reportedly trucked in 5,000 porta-potties (from as far away as New England). This sounds like a lot until you compare that number to the million people out here today. The answer is just to hold it.

• Inaccessibility. The cell phone network was spotty at best, strained by so many phones in the area trying to use the same system. I couldn't get any text messages out most of the day, and was occasionally startled by beeping noises signaling I'd received about 20 messages simultaneously, most of which had been sent hours earlier. So if I didn't text you back today, sorry.

• A much worse view than you'd get on TV. I basically plan to watch the inauguration ceremony on youtube at some point. I was way back by the Washington Monument, far enough away that even Aretha Franklin's extraordinary hat was no more than an imagined dot. I had to periodically jump up just to see the closest Jumbotron. But I could hear just fine, and being with the crowd was electric--catching the snippets of excited conversation, the occasional O-BAM-A! shouts, and all the other outbursts. (Particular crowd-rousers included the part of Obama's speech where he spoke about defeating terrorism and the second half of Rick Warren's invocation. During the prayer one woman shouted, "Rick, you're doing a GOOD job!")

Given those conditions, why bother? I can't explain why other than to say nothing could have made me miss it. I'm sure most of the people on the mall during MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech didn't have a great view either, and maybe a lot of them had horribly achy feet. I'm also sure that's not what they remember about the day.

What I will remember about today is laughing a lot (the camaraderie of shared exhaustion), the beauty of a cold but sunny January morning, getting a little choked up at Obama's speech despite my best intentions, and sharing a historic moment with a million or so people who were right up in my close personal space and all the others around the world who weren't.

After hearing of my day, you might well assume I'm off to put my feet up with a cup of hot tea and jump into the sweatpants, asap. That is definitely what I should do. Instead I'm considering going to a Rihanna charity concert or some other musically-themed ball, offers that have popped up in the last few hours. We'll see if I finally succumb to the glitter of tickets after all. (update: 10 pm. Rihanna it is! I'm a sucker for that song where she tells off her boyfriend. The sore feet will have to endure a few more hours.) The city is open until 4 am again tonight, and I can still hear the honks and shouts of happy people outside on this happy day. Hope you enjoyed it wherever you were...

The Ticket Scramble

So, I have no tickets to anything. I showed up in town, per usual, with no prep work put in and very few specific plans. I didn't pester my congressman for inauguration tickets, and I have no plans to attend a fancy state gala in a party dress. I know a couple dozen people who have also come to town for the week, and if I can get together with half of them while I'm here, I will consider my inauguration experience a success.

I'm pretty okay with not having tickets: in the case of the actual inauguration ceremony, having a ticket means getting the privilege of queuing up at the gate starting at 4 am to be let onto the mall at 8 am so you can stand in the cold for another 3 1/2 hours before the ceremony begins. I love Obama, but I would only do this sort of thing for Green Monster tickets (March 10, 2003, Fenway Park, 22 degrees Fahrenheit for 6 hours, part of which time I spent curled up in my sleeping bag like a homeless person.) Nonetheless, ticket chatter is all over town. There are "orange" tickets for the important people, "purple" tickets for the regular people, and maybe a few other colors I don't remember.

Another thing people have tickets to is one of the inaugural balls. Some of my friends headed off for the state of Texas inaugural ball this evening, an intimate soiree attended by 10,000 people and named, fabulously, "Black Tie & Boots." The tickets are very large, as befits a proper Texas shindig. Some of the Parma staffers are going to the "Youth Ball" tomorrow night which is not, as it sounds, a party for third-graders, but in fact an event for people aged 18-35 and rumored to be one of the "hipper" balls. I don't know that the words hip and ball go together, but it has promise.

I also have good news in a different kind of ticket department. I did a little internet research to find out that the meters are shut off for tomorrow and I just might be parked in a place where I won't be towed. I have to admit that at this particular moment, this is the ticket situation I'm most excited about.

So I'm going into tomorrow with no tickets, no privilege, and no perks. I'll just be soaking up the atmosphere, being bombarded by Obama tshirt-sellers on every corner, darting into bars for a warm-up when it gets too chilly, and getting swallowed up by the heaving crowd of happy people on the mall. I couldn't be more excited.

In the Thick of Things

I just found out the DC road closures started an hour ago, which was about an hour too late for me to do anything about it. My car is still parked downtown and therefore stuck now for the duration. It hasn't gotten towed so far; wish me luck.

I'm already exhausted. Part of that is staying up until four o'clock in the morning participating in an impromptu dance party with my old friends from the Parma campaign office, granted, but it's also the added effort required to accomplish everyday things around here right now. Just a few examples of things that haven't worked for me in the last 24 hours: my metro card, the metro, the cab company phone number, my air mattress (slow leak), the ladies' room (if a complete absence of toilet paper counts as "not working," and for me it does), the credit card system at the bar, the ATM machine, basic planning and communication skills.

With the temporarily extended bar hours (til 4 am), DC is like New York's little sister that gets to stay up late just this one time for the special party. You can tell she's pretty excited about it, and also that she's not quite ready to hang with the grown-ups. The cab situation is dire, the metro inexplicably closed at midnight last night, and I can't think of a worse time for a bar to turn cash-only than that moment of the night when everyone is ready to put a lot of unnecessary drinks on a bar tab.

But it's all very fun anyway. Even though people are stuffed in every nook and cranny of the city, everyone is being VERY polite. There's tons of Obama goodwill in the air and especially courteous "excuse me"s and "thank you"s on every corner. It feels a little like when the Sox won the series for the first time in 2004 and I joined in the celebratory frenzy in Kenmore Square. Yeah, there was mass chaos, riot squaders, and the real possibility of death by trampling, but you could really feel the love too.

So, Happy MLK Day from DC, where I'm feeling the love...

Going to Washington DC

I could use about a month to get my life in order. Fall and winter have been such a blur that I still haven't fully unpacked from Ohio. Yup, there is a box in my apartment in Boston filled with Obama pin-pricked sweaters, comfy walking shoes for canvassing, and a Halloween costume. I haven't spent quality time with most of my friends for eons, and I am one of those people giving money to Netflix every month for no reason. I also just returned from 16 days in California & Arizona for the holidays. This is time I could have spent being productive and organizational but instead spent eating In-N-Out, going to Disneyland, and laying around in the sunshine since it was 80 degrees. There is no time to delay, however. The unpacked bags will have to molder and my massive to-do list will have to wait for three more days. The inauguration is here, and I am not going to miss it.

I left Brooklyn this morning well-fortified with a cheese tamale to go from Beaner Cafe and the best Mexican hot chocolate you will find in the city. I brought my Obama buttons out of retirement and listened to hip-hop remix anthems of Obama speeches on the radio all the way through New Jersey. I even caught a snippet of Beyonce dueting with Pete Seger (could that be right?) at the big free concert at the Lincoln Memorial this afternoon, and heard our President-elect talking about the great challenges we face as this administration begins. I feel pretty ready to celebrate.

Despite alarmist reports of traffic and mayhem in the city, I rolled into DC this afternoon unscathed and found an easy parking spot right in front of my friend's apartment. My secret to good parking karma is simply to drive to those places where most people are too smart or scared to drive. Last night I headed straight to Manhattan from Boston and parked on the street in front of the bar where my friend was giving a show. Saturday night, in the Village. Lunacy pays off.

I know you all wanted to go to the inauguration. (Well, not you, Sonny, or my other lovely but misguided Republican friends.) But you have to work on Tuesday, or it was going to be a 20-hour drive of insanity, or you live in Pakistan, or you were scared off by the whole "it will be chaos!" hysteria. For whatever reason, you're not going to show up for the big event. Since you're not, I will continue that vicarious arrangement we had during the campaign and do my best to make you feel like you are here. So get ready for numerous reports from the field (and by field I mean the loud, badly lit and crowded bar where I will probably be viewing the inauguration on a 16" television) and my best Christiane Amanpour impersonation of what it is like here on the ground. It's nice to be back.

Leaving Cleveland

You've been good to me, Ohio. I have to say I'm sorry to say goodbye. The delicious autumn produce, the cozy supporter housing, and, most of all, the excitement of working towards something amazing with a fabulous group of people--these things are hard to leave.

Our week of glorious Indian summer finally over, Cleveland sent me off with the kind of gray, blustery day that reminds me it is November, and that all good things must come to an end. On to the next adventure...

Aftermath

Now we clean the office.

I've NEVER BEEN SO TIRED in all my life. I think the last few weeks finally caught up with me all at once now that the adrenalin is gone. My solid twelve hours of sleep last night didn't even make a dent. We finish cleaning up tomorrow, then I'm headed up to Michigan to visit my grandpa and hopefully recover fully. I want to thank everyone who helped send me here to Ohio, who supported me with kind words and texts and emails and fantastic care packages and ecstatic phone calls on election night. You should all feel like a little of you went to Ohio, too.

See you all back in Boston! Or California, DC, New York, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Washington, Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Pakistan, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Oregon, Arizona, and any other place you, my wonderful friends, are living that I plan to visit before too long...

Is it True?

CNN just called Ohio for Obama. I didn't believe it until then. Fox said it, then MSNBC, then NBC. I only believed it after I saw the blue state and the checkmark myself. I'm so happy. Thank you everyone, for getting me here.