I Have Been Neglecting My Blog

, I know, and I'm sorry. I was a bad, bad girl. I won't do it again. I've just been a little down in the dumps lately, and not very motivated at all. But, that's life, I guess, and another story. One I will tell when I finally get finished with the telling of the tale of my trip to DC.

On Inauguration Day, we spent a few minutes getting over the fact that we didn't get to see or hear anything. A very few minutes. Our first thought once we had gotten past the disappointment (yes, we actually did kind of share one thought) was that we should try to see the parade. Immediately, though, we realized a few things.
1.) We had no idea which way the parade route was, and we couldn't follow the crowd because there really was no crowd. Which led us to
2.) The approximately 6.000 people who had been keeping our arms pinned to our sides while we waited in line for four hours were mostly gone, probably to parade route, and probably taking up all the good viewing places. And that, in turn, led us to
3) We had been standing in line for 4 hours, which kinda makes ya wanna sit down. And then
4) We went into survival mode, because it was COLD out.

So, back to Union Station it was. We had heard that much of the station was going to be closed down for the day, but there were lots of people going inside and we figured they had to be going somewhere, so we would find somewhere to go, too. We followed a gaggle of people who appeared to be going inside. We walked all the way around a huge blockade closing down the street in front of the station until we were halted by a Secret Service agent. Well, we weren't. A jogger in front of us was.

"Ma'am, I can't let you go over there," he said.

"Really?" she asked.

"Really," he replied.

"But look at all those people. They're all going in that way."

"Yes they are. But you aren't."

"Oh, come on. Why didn't you stop them?"

"Because I have to start somewhere and you were the one I got to first. Go the other way!"

So a very pissed off jogger turned around and jogged away. We, also, turned to leave. We did not jog. I didn't, at least. It took us an extra 2o minutes to get around the blockaded street and into the rear entrance of the building. It was 1:30 or 2 by the time we got in. We hadn't eaten yet and we'd been up since 4. Food seemed like a good idea, so we went downstairs into the food court. At least I think it was the food court. All I could see was people and people and people forever. We went down a beautiful wooden staircase into a sea of people. I'm not exaggerating. I swear. You literally had to swim to get through them. There were, like, a googleplex of tables and chairs in the middle of the room, and every single one was taken. All of the tables and even some of the chairs, in fact, were taken by more than one person. And all the wall space was full of people standing and leaning or sitting with their legs curled under them to avoid amputation by trampling. It was the kind of crowd where you have to hug the person in front of you and spin around to trade places. I almost gave up on eating anything when I saw all the people, but I was pretty hungry. Then, miracle of miracles, as we wandered through the ocean of arms and legs and torsoes that were so numerous that they didn't even seem to be connected to each other, I saw the end of a ling. And it was only 20 or so people from the cash register!

I didn't even look to see what restaurant it was; I just dove right into that line. Chris followed, thoroughly confused.

"We'll eat here. Looks like a decent place."

He shrugged in indifference and we waited. There was a real Nazi at the cash register. I'm pretty sure. An Asian one, but a Nazi all the same.

"WHAT YOU WANT?!?" she shriek-growled at me. I told her what number meal I wanted and stammered out what I wanted to drink. "YOU NEXT!!!" she roared at Chris, who just ordered what I ordered, probably because it was all he could think of when his life was being threatened by the woman behind the counter. We had a slight argument with the man who was cooking because he didn't give Chris any fries and didn't speak English well enough to understand what we meant, but finally we were the proud owners of bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and drinks. We made our way to someplace out of the way, which wasn't easy. I thought maybe we'd be able to swoop into the seats at a table as someone stood up to leave, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The people standing in between the tables were vultures waiting for a place to sit, and to dive in front of a hungry vulture is to beg for death. We finally made it across the room and found a random, pointless hallway in the food court. There was seating space (by which I literally mean space to sit on the floor, not an actual table and chairs or even just chairs) along one wall, and so that's where we sat. We sat there and ate our burgers and such and then just continued to sit there because there was no place else to go. It was too cold out to spend much time outside, and there wasn't much to do outside but duck out of people's way anyway. While we were sitting there, we discovered that the place we had ordered our food from was called Flamers. We immediately took a picture of a cup to share with our friend Tom, who is of the flaming persuasion. But like all good times, it had to come to an end. We had been sitting there for probably 45 minutes, thinking that if they didn't close the food court after all, maybe we could get away with sitting there until we had to go to the Ball, when a police officer of some sort came and told us we had to leave. I'm really not sure what kind of a police officer he was. There were DC Police, Union Station Police, Amtrak Police, FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security officers everywhere, along with other acronyms I can't remember, I'm sure. The FBI even had snipers walking through the crowd. It catches your attention when a man dressed in camouflage and carrying a sniper rifle brushes up against you, let me tell you.

We climbed the enormous staircase back to the main floor. At the top, we settled ourselves against the rail that overlooked the food court. That lasted a few minutes, then some people came and asked us to move forward. They started putting up huge poles with curtains on them around the food court rail, which confused us until we overheard someone saying that the CIA was holding their Inaugural Ball in Union Station. Eventually we lost our seating altogether and just sort of stood in front of a kiosk with a TV screen announcing train arrivals and departures. Police officers of varying types asked us several times if we had train tickets; those who did not have tickets were forced to leave. Luckily, we had tickets. We were not intending to use them, since we had bought them before we knew we were staying for the Ball, and I thought they were useless, but it turns out that they were very useful, for keeping us out of the cold and off of the street. They were our pass to stay in Union Station until 8:30, and we planned to leave before then anyway.

We kept getting moved from one place to another until finally, we were herded into the area where all the trains were boarding. The CIA had the rest of the place closed down. Apparently they're pretty big on security. The crowd was amazing. We squeezed ourselves into a little space between some pay phones and the entrance to an Au Bon Pain, right across the hall from Union Station Liquor. I'm not lying. They have a liquor store in a train station. We strongly considered partaking. It might have made the day more exciting. Once we were settled, all we had to do was wait. The Ball was at 7:30. We got to our "campsite," so to speak, sometime around 3 or 3:30. It was a long wait. Chris is not good at waiting. And it was noisy. And crowded. Every so often, there was a little space, in between train boardings, but mostly, there were people touching us. Everyone was trying to get sorted into train lines or get through the building to exit or find their trains. For the entire time that we were sitting there, I am pretty sure there were not more than ten minutes that I was not being touched by another body. We met a few nice people, though, particularly one man who sat there for quite a while himself waiting for his train. He was an older black guy and we had a good time talking with him about the campaign and the Inauguration. Chris talked to him just fine; he doesn't bother trying to be nice to me when he's in a shitty mood anymore, but he is a social butterfly, so other people bring out the best in him. I fought my way to the bathroom once, but the experience was so traumatic that I decided if I had to go again, I would just hike up my dress and squat. I'm pretty sure no one would have noticed.

And then, finally, at long, long, long, long, long, long (you get the idea) last, quarter after 7. Our next task, finding a cab, was a daunting one. Neither Chris nor I had ever hailed a cab before, and the day of Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington DC was probably not a good place to start, but what the hell. May as well just jump in, right? So, we watched a doorman from a hotel get cabs for a few people and then prepared ourselves to be his competition.

Up next: An amazing Inaugural Ball sandwiched between two equally hair-raising and deliciously horrifying cab rides.