Kyle and Nicole's DC Inauguration Extravaganza! Part 5

The big day arrived! We got up and out about 7:30am and hit the metro. The station near the hotel wasn't bad, there were just a few more people there than usual. As we got closer to the capitol, the cars got super full and people were packed like sardines.

When we got off the metro about 8am there was already a sea of people crowding the streets of the capitol. We realized we had to walk all the way around the capitol to get to our entrance. We found a line to our entrance and followed it all the way around a block to the end. When we got into line, we met a red capped volunteer (all the volunteers wore special red caps to stand out) and he said that the block wrapping line was bogus and led to nowhere. He led us and a few hundred other people to the actual entrance and we were in in under an hour (very much unlike the people who had arrived at 4am and created a bogus line).

We were two hours early and found a spot to sit and relax for a bit. About 10-10:30am the US Marine band began to play and slightly entertain the 2million+ crowd. Important political figure heads began to file out of the capitol around 11am. The crowd cheered for Jimmy Carter and some booed for Bush Sr. and everyone cheered again for the Clintons and then many booed again for Bush Jr. When the Obama family emerged on the jumbotrons, the crowd went crazy. The (positive) mob mentality was humongous.

The ceremony was very straight forward. very much like all the other swearing in ceremonies that I've seen before, but Obama's speech was very interesting. He spoke with humility, humbleness and a very prepared mentality for the very difficult job ahead of him. The full transcript of his speech is on the Huffington Post. I highly recommend reading it over. The actual event was very emotional and reading his words over again is well worth it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/20/president-obamas-inaugura_n_159370.html

Few of my pictures from yesterday turned out and the only pictures I ended up uploading to flickr are of a little photo shoot Nicole and I did while waiting for the event to begin. None of my pictures of the jumbotrons turned out nor was I happy with my photos of the crowds. Here's the slim pickings from yesterday:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylelowe/sets/72157612830041500/