Jan 20, 4:30 PM.  Happy Obama Day!  Wish you could have been here!  I’m watching my new President walk to the White House (on TV, because we couldn’t get over to the parade route), and it seems like a good time to reflect on the day.  I woke up this morning without an alarm at about sunrise, and I’d been dreaming about the inauguration all night.  When I woke up, I was completely awake, like Christmas morning when you’re a kid.  I woke Matt up, and we got ready to go.  I thought I was done wearing tights, but I donned them for a final time today.  I was ready to leave, but Matt made me eat breakfast.  Luckily.  We were hungry as hostages by the time we got anything else.  Chris and Shivani both had to work today, but their neighbors were walking down at the same time as us, so we followed them.  They stopped for breakfast, though, so we struck out on our own.  We followed the throngs around the south end of the Mall, and eventually hopped a fence to get pretty close.  By the time we got there, the Mall was completely full, so they wouldn’t let us in.  We climbed up in a tree for a better view.
 
Climbing the tree was actually quite an adventure.  The lowest branch was about 13 feet off the ground, so Matt gave me a mighty boost and I clambered up.  Then, we tied our belts together and I lowered the end down to Matt, and he strong-armed up the belts to the notch.  We got set, tried not to think about how we were going to get down, and waited.
 
And waited.  It was probably an hour before the inauguration started, and we were about 20 feet above the crowds in the wind.  It was 30 degrees today, with a wind chill of 18.  If it had been a bike riding day, it would have been the warmest of the whole trip, but since we were immobile, it was pretty cold.  And straddling a tree branch gets pretty uncomfortable after a couple hours.  Still, there was nothing that could have killed the buzz today.  The atmosphere was just amazing.  Everyone was friendly, smiling, laughing, crying, and waiting for the new President.
 
We were in a great place:  we could see the whole crowd underneath the Washington Monument, but we could also see the individual faces in the crowds around our tree.  It was a deeply moving ceremony.  Dignified, respectful, yet passionate too.  It was not a partisan speech, but it showed a new progressive vision—a vision capacious enough to include everyone.  More important, it is a vision rooted in the basics:  love and courage and initiative.  It was not divisive; it was just American.
 
After the benediction, the crowds broke up and we clambered down.  Matt literally held my entire weight on one hand while I was trying to get set to drop.  It’s nice to have a Matt with you.  When we left, along with all 2 million of our new friends, it was complete gridlock.  Matt joked that the crowd needed some bran, because it wasn’t moving.  Crude, yes, but we had a nice laugh about it with the folks around us.  The crowd was inching forward together with little steps, and we all got into a certain rhythm, shoulders swaying back and forth as we tottered forward.  One guy behind us named it the “Obama shuffle.”  The most remarkable thing was that no one was impatient or impolite, no matter how slow things went.
 
When we got about a half mile away, things thinned out.  We saw an amoeba-shaped crowd of people hovering close together in the middle of the street, and finally figured out that they were standing above a vent in the street where hot air was coming out.  We joined them long enough to knock the chill off, then walked to a coffee shop for hot chocolate and muffins, and then back to Chris and Shivani’s.
 
Hope.  It was alive in D.C. today.  It’s what brought us on this journey.  I can’t help but think that we’ve entered a new political era—one in which we can get past the politics of favoritism and influence-peddling.  Obama didn’t take money from coal during the campaign, so if anybody can do this, he can.  We’re going to win this battle.
 
We will deliver the petition and letters at 1:00 tomorrow.  Wish us luck!

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