Taking a Leap of Faith

On June 3, 2008, Barack Obama was declared the Democratic presidential nominee. The next day, June 4, 2008, we reserved cabin #3 at Hot Tub Heaven in Linden, Virginia (within commuting distance of Washington DC) in hopes of a Barack win and our ability to get inauguration tickets.





"From: "Hot Tub Heaven Vacation Chalets"
To: "Lillian Ruiz"
Sent: Wednesday, June 4, 2008 10:39:44 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Hot Tub Heaven Vacation Chalets - Reservation

Hello !
Your reservation has been received and booked."



The cabin was perfect for our pug (pooch friendly with a fenced-in yard) although too big for our needs (2 bedroom). Little did we know that when the time came, we would be attending the inauguration with two of our friends using the second bedroom. See the following link for pictures of the cabin:
http://www.hottubheavenproperties.com/hth3.html

On Tuesday, Nov 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election. The next day, Nov 5, we began to research ways to obtain inauguration tickets. On Nov 6, we wrote to our two state senators (Kerry and Kennedy) and congressman (Olver) for tickets.

On Nov 21, Senator Olver's office sent us an e-mail indicating that our request had been granted. (As it turned out, Kerry and Olver had run out of tickets.)



"From: "Jason Powers"
To: "Jason Powers" , "Lillian Ruiz"
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 4:10:08 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Inauguration Ticket Information

Dear Sir/Madam,
Congressman John Olver is pleased to offer you two tickets to attend the Inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Though you many have requested more than two, in the interest of offering this opportunity to as broad a group as possible and due to the thousands of requests, Congressman Olver has decided to limit distribution to 2 tickets per group, family, or person."



Well, the period between Nov 5 and Nov 21 seemed like a lifetime, so we tried to get inaugural ball tickets instead (little did we guess that we would get BOTH inauguration and ball tickets). We requested tickets for two DC balls: Hawaii (Obama's birthplace) and Illinois (his home state) hoping that Obama might attend both. We were too late to get Hawaii tickets (we sent out our request 11/7), but were successful in reserving Illinois tickets, even though we sent out our request two days later, on 11/9. Luckily, the Illinois ball was on the evening before the inauguration (Jan 19, Martin Luther King Day) because, upon reflection, I don't know how we would have managed attending a ball after the grueling experience of the inauguration.

More will follow about the logistics of balancing the two events, but the short story is that after the Illinois Ball (at approximately 2:30AM) we changed out of our evening clothes in the back seat of our car (driven by our friend and my colleague Trevor and his sister Cesia that morning to the Virginia metro station from our cabin) and we all left shortly thereafter to stand in line for the first subway to DC (before 4AM) to start our inauguration journey. In other words, we didn't sleep that night, but it was well worth it.

Lillian