Inauguration summary! part 1

Okay, I decided to do this by day, so you get Tuesday evening and Wednesday first!
----------------------------
Well, my summary of the 55th Presidential Inauguration… what a great time!

I decided to go down about 3 weeks before the actual event. I got an email from a friend that he was going (from CA no less) and he was asking if anyone else wanted to. He also asked if we wanted to go see the Supreme Court argue 2 cases the day before. Well, I bandied it about for a while, and finally decided to go. I mean, how often do you get an opportunity like this!

So, I took Amtrak down on Tuesday afternoon. Trip was uneventful. I had my laptop with me, watched a movie and read (strong word… perused? skimmed?) the briefs from the cases we were going to see. I met Chris (CA friend) at BWI Airport. We then took a MARC train down to DC.

Well, we got into DC at about 9pm, and then we had to take a metro train to Fairfax VA, where we were staying with some friends of Chris’. That night we basically talked a bit with Kalaan and Mark (the two guys), and hit the hay.

The next morning, Brandon, Adam, Luke and Andrew showed up. They had driven through the night from Wisconsin. It took us about an hour to get ready and head out to Washington DC.

We arrived at the SCOTUS at around 9:45 that morning (cases started at 10, we were a bit late) and met Amy there. Amy was down with her sister and a friend from Minnesota. She, Brandon, Chris, Adam and myself went to the same law school (Oak Brook College of Law) Brandon a year before Chris and I, and Amy one behind. Adam is just getting finished.

Anyway, we got in through the reservation line as opposed to the general public line (it is so cool to be able to skip ahead of people, you look all important and everythingJ) The cases were interesting. I followed most of what was going on, especially in the second case, which was an election/first amendment case. They weren’t anything particularly earth shattering, legal wise. If you want to know about them, put down a comment and I can oblige.

When we got out of the Court we found it was SNOWING!!! DC in the snow is beautiful… we stopped and took a lot of pictures of the Capitol, the SCOTUS, each other…

The afternoon was spent tracking down tickets to various events. Some of the guys had Gold tickets (the furthest back) and wanted Green or Yellow (closer). Some had none at all, and Chris and I had Green AND yellow tickets, but wanted to see if a friend of his could get better ones.

About this time, we decided to get lunch at Union Station. Amy was a good sport, the guys (including me) all decided to get pizza, and she was happy to go along with the decision. Talking over what we all had to do, we decided to split up after lunch. Chris, Amy and I had to go to L’Enfant Plaza to get some tickets for various events we had waiting, and the other guys were tracking down some others, so we went our separate ways.

When we got to the ticket pick up place, Chris found he could get tickets to the Texas-Wyoming ball… so he did! 4 of them… and we picked up our tickets to the Celebration of Freedom that night, which started at about 4, and it was 3:30 at the time!

We left Amy to go on her way (she was picking up some stuff for a Minnesota dinner and some other events) and we headed to the Celebration of Freedom on the Ellipse. Basically, it was a big concert/honoring show, with pieces honoring the Apollo astronauts, songs about Freedom, stuff like that.

We were somewhat excited, but didn’t really know what to expect. It was cold, had been snowing, and so there weren’t that many people there, so it started late, we were there in plenty of time. Well, the color guard came out, and they had the flags of all the states, and we were thinking, well this is cool… and then… da da da da da DAAA… Hail to the Chief starts! And there was the President, 50 yards away, with Laura, Bush 41 and Barbara, Cheney and his wife and the girls!

The celebration was fun, Andrea Bocelli sang, Gary Sinise introduced the astronauts, and there were other fun things. At the end, Bush and Cheney spoke. Bush called Cheney the “best VP ever… sorry Dad” and Laura the most wonderful first lady ever “sorry mom”… cuteJ

And then the fireworks started! Over the White House (in front of us) and the Washington Monument (behind us!). Think of the finale to the best fireworks show you have ever seen, and then extend it for about 10 minutes. It was more fireworks than I have seen in one place in my life! Chris and I were in heaven; we even got interviewed by someone from some paper (pretty fun actually, he has it on video).

Well, with that over, Chris and I decided to figure out how to get tuxes for the ball the next night (you can tell we really planned this…). We found out that JC Penney had decent tuxes for a good price (I’ve found you might as well buy a tux, by the time you rent one you are paying the same thing), so we headed back on the metro, got into Kalaan’s car, and proceeded to screw up getting home. By the time we picked up Mark (who knew how to get there) and got to Penney’s, they were almost closed, and then we found out they didn’t have our sizes! They did have shirt/tie/cummerbund combos for 30 bucks, so we picked those up, and thought we would try to go to Syms the next afternoon or something.

That night, we decided to forget the Syms idea, and just wear black suits (Chris and I are the same size and he brought 2) and bow ties. Chris also found a person who wanted to trade 2 ball tickets for 2 blue section tickets (closer than the yellow and green we had!) so we took the opportunity!