As dark and as bitterly cold as it was about 4 AM, there was already a party mood among the pedestrians making their way toward the Mall. No maps needed, as we just followed the crowd. Most of us were walking in the street, until the police shouted through megaphones to get out of the street.
Not a problem at all, and finally, after a few minutes of walking, we found….the GIGANTIC CROWD.
This crowd, one of the subsets of the REALLY, REALLY GIGANTIC CROWD, consisted of our fellow Silver Gate ticket holders. Off to our right, brilliantly illuminated by floods, was the capital building. As many times as I saw it on TV or in the newspaper, it was very impressive, and in spite of wanting to be jaded and cynical about such a familiar landmark, I was very impressed by the beauty of the architecture and the way it was displayed.
Finding a place in the line adjacent to the new Smithsonian American Indian Museum, myself and my party had to just wait. We were quickly engulfed by the GIGANTIC CROWD, which grew and grew as the morning progressed from full darkness to the rosy hues of the pre-sunrise. You have to understand that this was such a large crowd, moving was impossible aside from jigging up and down a bit to stay warm and stomping your feet.
I, like all of us, were elbow to elbow, chest to back, shoulder to shoulder with strangers. The party atmosphere I had mentioned earlier never left, and although all of us were not very comfortable, it was a lot of fun talking to fellow inauguration goers and finding out more about our temporary neighbors. I was talking to one African-American guy, and the song Kumbaya came up (the joke being we should sing campfire songs to pass the time), and I, a Caucasian, told him the word came from an African spiritual and means “come by here.”
“Really?” he asked with smile.
“Really” I replied, and he shook his head and said, “Only in America.”
Finally, with the light growing in the eastern sky and all of us more shivery and cold, THE GIGANTIC CROWD began to move. Our party, Trevor, Cesia, Lil, and I formed a human chain so we wouldn't lose one another. Slowly, ever so slowly, the crowd began to move as one toward the actual gate that would let us into the Mall. How far away that was, we had no idea, as visibility was nil. But, we were moving, and that is all that counted. Smiles broke out, and you could feel the energy rising as we shuffled along.
For about 50 feet.
Then we, the happy and yet now mystified GIGANTIC CROWD, stopped, having now morphed into THE STRANGE, MANY HEADED AND LEGGED THING. After a while, we began to move again. Remarkably, with so many heads, we were blind. The situation was not exactly safe; if someone had panicked, injuries or death may have easily resulted, but the group of us looked out for each other.
“Curb coming!” came one cry. “Tree root, careful!” came another voice from the mass of people shuffling along toward what we hoped really was the gate. This thing had many vocal cords.
I began making jokes to those around me, making up what I thought the cries and calls of this creature we had become would sound like – “MWAAAAAAA, MWAAAAA!” – and laughter rippled through the happy-if-still-chilly creature lumbering along.
Finally, after a time, we broke free from the STRANGE, MANY HEADED AND LEGGED THING and made it to the gate. A brisk frisking was followed by euphoria at actually making it into the Mall.
We had time to stretch and walk around a bit, but that wouldn’t last long, as this new crowd began to swell as more and more people got through the security check point and joined us on the grassy area. The crowd would eventually swell to two million.
We had been warned by the media of "crush-level crowds," and that's exactly what we got. While, thankfully, no one in the crowd was injured, one soveneir watch Lil had in her purse (one watch of twelve: see blog entry Inauguration Day: Part III) did not fare so well:
Dane
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