I received the following email from Pat, a former co-worker. She and her husband took their grandson Tyler to see the inauguration day parade. Tyler snapped this photo; click on it to enlarge the image.
I got up at 1:30 am and we were on the road by 2:15 am. We drove to New Carollton MD METRO station. I'm guessing we got there about 4:30-5 am. We were in DC around 6:30ish.
To sum it all up, it was so exciting. Imagine 2M people and no arrests. The people were all in good spirits, the police, military, security, etc all in good moods. We were on the mall prior to the inauguaration. No pushing, shoving - people weren't even stepping on each others toes.
Sadly we weren't on the mall with all the flag waivers during the oath. We had tickets for the parade and had to make a choice between the Mall and the parade because they were closing Constitution Ave which was between the Mall and the parade route. We left the Mall area before 11 to make sure we could get to the parade area. We waited more than 4 hours in the cold for the parade. For most of those hours we were the only people on our set of bleachers. I suspect others who purchased tickets went to the Mall but couldn't get to the parade route due to the road closure. The best part of the whole day was when the President and his wife wallked the two blocks - they walked right in front of us. I can't believe how exciting that was. Michelle Obama looked right at me on the bleacher and waived. Also saw Joe Biden and his wife. After they walked by about 90% of the people left - too cold!
We left around 6 pm and were home by 10:30.
