Photos from the Inauguration

Today, my cousin Matthew and I took the Metro into D.C., silver tickets in hand, to view the Inauguration.  We got off at Gallery Place-Chinatown on a train that might have hit a woman (I think she was okay, though).  We then walked under the Third Street Tunnel, emerging south of the mall near Independence Avenue.  The tunnel, which is normally a bridge for cars driving to 395, was closed to vehicles.  It was amazing to walk beneath the city in a place intended only for cars, among thousands of people who were all in D.C. for the same purpose.

When we got to the line for the silver section, we walked back and back and back, realizing the it stretched about a half mile, from the Mall entrance, around several government buildings to just under some Amtrak tracks.

Unfortunately, the line we were waiting in closed well before we got to the front.  We did not have to wait that long–about an hour–compared to other people, so I couldn’t be too upset.  We hurried to a bar in the Farragut area and watched the inauguration on a big screen TV with many other enthusiastic people like the group behind us who were in from Detroit.  I think I will never again in my lifetime see so many people and a city so swept up by one common purpose as I did yesterday in D.C.  Though our nation has a lot of difficult days ahead, and I am a little worried about some of Obama’s more economically “liberal” appointments, I am greatly relieved that he is President and George W. Bush is now gone.

perhaps the only person at the Inauguration to wear a McCain/Palin button

A reporter asking souvenir vendor how business is. The vendor said it was not as good as it could be.

the Third Street Tunnel

walking to the line with hundreds of other people

watching at the bar

President Barack Obama gave a speech that subtly but firmly rebuked the ethic of the Bush years.