A beautiful day to swear in a president

Here is just how close we were to the Capitol building at Pres. Barack Obama's inauguration. See the tiny little top of the Capitol dome in the distance? Clearly, we were nowhere close.

But the trip was exciting anyway, even with the inconveniences. We were on a bus for 16 hours, sitting with a bunch of strangers. Our seats were in the second-to-last row, meaning we were right opposite the toilet. The TOILET ON THE BUS. The driver had warned everyone this was a TOILET ON A BUS and, in the most delicate terms, forbade anyone from doing anything in there more, uh, fragrant than necessary. Luckily, everyone seemed to agree that no matter where they were sitting, a charter bus does not have the capacity to render anyone out of the reach of noisome odors, so everyone complied.

We left the mall parking lot at 3:30 a.m. the day before the inauguration. Everyone else was clad in their finest Obama gear, and I mean decked out like Christmas. There were Obama buttons, hats, shirts, jackets...someone even hauled out Franklin Mint Obama plates and started hawking them while we were somewhere outside Charlotte, NC. This is a picture of Billy Evans ("I go by Meatball") and his bedazzled Obama skull cap.

We got to Richmond, Va. about 11pm Monday night and had to get up at 3am the next morning (again) for the 90-minute trip from Richmond into DC. We had to arrive early to beat the crowd. The bus company had lucked out and gotten Secret Service permission to drive into DC and park the bus by Nationals stadium all day, about 10 blocks away from the National Mall. That was unbelievably lucky, since by the time we got to DC at 5am, it was clear we had not beaten the crowd at all. We were right in the middle of it.

It was kind of exciting seeing so much activity in DC that early in the morning, and knowing we were part of something momentous. That early in the morning, however crowded it already was, little commerce was going on. The only business that was open at that hour was the McDonalds on First Street SE, which was doing a booming business.

As soon as everyone piled off the bus, John and I lost most of our group. I had hoped to tag along with a couple of people and get their impressions of the day, but everyone took off in different directions. We'd been given easy directions to the Mall ("four blocks up, turn left, five blocks up and you're there") but no one could follow them because most of the streets had been blocked off by emergency vehicles. I heard later that all the slower people on the bus started following me because they figured "the newspaper lady" would know where she was going, but we were walking too fast for them to catch up. John and I ended up running into a much larger herd of people headed for the Mall, so we joined them, since we were clearly not going to get to the Mall at the entrance we'd hoped. It was far too crowded already and the Mall was already halfway filled by 6am. We'd have to enter it much further back.

Here's what I loved about the day: It was happy. Just...happy. Even the National Guard troops who were stationed at every intersection to make sure we didn't wander off and try to steal a tank were smiling. They stopped traffic so we could cross the street. They smiled and said "Welcome to DC!" They gave an endless stream of people directions to everywhere. They joked and laughed with us about the size of the crowds. It was like everyone in DC, for one day, was on their best behavior because they wanted the day to be perfect. And while we had some trouble getting out of the Mall after the swearing-in ceremony, I heard there were no arrests that day. NO arrests. In DC. On a day when 1.8 million people were in the city chapping their hides in 17-degree weather for hours. Is this a great country or what?

John and I got onto the Mall about 6:30am and walked as close as we could toward the Capitol. There was a lot more room to walk around, as far back as we were, because no one was pushing and shoving. We were all so far back there was no point in trying to push your way to the front because the view would have been the same. We just tried to get within viewing distance from a jumbotron.

We ended up stopping next to a guy with a sign on a stick who told us we were welcome to share his space. Turned out he was from Birmingham, was a lifelong Republican and had volunteered for the Obama campaign after hearing him speak in Selma in March 2007. He had brought his daughter Leanne and her 7-year-old daughter, who Leanne said had been the only Obama supporter in her third grade class.

The Mall was freezing. There is no other word for it. I brought hand warmers and toe warmers and we needed them. I had to keep taking my gloves off to twitter what was going on, so every few minutes I'd send a tweet and then shove my hands in my pockets to warm them up, and then take my hands out to sent another tweet. There was plenty going on to keep us occupied while we waited. The jumbotrons showed parts of Sunday's inauguration concert and most people were dancing around and jumping to the music to stay warm. The dignitaries started showing up around 9am, and the jumbotrons showed them arriving and taking their seats. There was a lot of booing and hissing for the usual Republicans, some choruses of "Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!" whenever a Bush showed up on screen, and a resounding hissing for Joe Lieberman.

I know people have criticized the crowds for having booed Bush and especially Cheney (who rolled up in a wheelchair, making the crowd laugh hard), saying it was in poor taste. I have to say I frankly don't blame them. After eight years of wandering in the desert, a cool, refreshing drink of water feels really good. I think the crowd wasn't angry so much as relieved and happy that the Bush era was finally just a few short minutes away from being over over over and the nightmare would end.

But the biggest noise came when Obama and Biden took their oaths of office. I thought I would cry when the moment came, but instead, I just felt overwhelmingly happy and proud. It's a cliche to say it now, but I really never thought the day would come when a majority of Americans would willingly choose a black man to lead them. But I guess a message of unity, change and hope still has far more impact than one of division, partisanship and hate. And that's something to keep us all going. I was proud of my country that day, proud that so many of us hope for the same thing: justice, equality and the hope that our country can stand tall in the world and be a beacon for peace and democracy. The kid in this photo is from Virginia, and his sign says "Proud to be an American."

Getting off the Mall was a lot more arduous than getting on it. For one thing, security seemed to have entirely disappeared. All the police officers and National Guard who had been ubiquitous before the ceremony were gone, off to take part in the inaugural parade. John and I had to figure out how to get off the mall, past the parade route and into the Hart Senate office building to meet my reporter and his cousin, who would let us into her office so we could file our stories and download our videos and photos.

We ended up walking for what I estimate was two years and 15 miles. First we went to the north side of the mall, the same side as the Senate buildings were, only to be told by cops that that way was blocked. We decided to walk south, go the long way around the back of the Capitol building on the House side and get to the Senate side that way (House offices are on the south side of the Capitol building, Senate offices on the north). We passed the MSNBC portable broadcast booth on the way, where Olberman, Matthews, Maddow, et al were still going strong. If you look closely enough at the photo on the right, you can see Chris Matthews' giant bucket head behind the glass. In fact, I think they were at it all night too, because they were still broadcasting from the booth when we got back to the hotel at 9pm.

It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3pm before we finally met up with my reporter, Jamon, and his cousin. I'm grateful we found them and that she was able to get us into a warm building. John and I had been lugging a 17-inch laptop, the video camera, a still camera and several copies of that day's Washington Post (I couldn't help myself. Newspapers are still relevant, dammit!), which severely weighed down the bag, for hours. We were both exhausted and really needed someplace to relax and take a load off.

Coming out of the Senate, we passed the Capitol building again on our way to our bus. The sun was setting and the atmosphere seemed much calmer than earlier in the day. We felt much more relaxed too, after resting a little, putting down our gear and filing our assignments for the day.

It was a beautiful day for an inauguration. Looking back, we are both so glad we decided to take the trip, however inconvenient it was. It was history in the making and we were a part of it. And it was a proud day.