Cricket South's DC Blog: Inauguration Day 1-20-2009

January 22, 2009

Inauguration Day 1-20-2009

We all got up at 3:00 AM, were on Metro at 4:00 AM & were attempting to exit Metro at L'Enfant Plaza about 4:20 AM. It was crazy. Once we were outside of Metro we were held at 4th St & Independence Ave. It was freezing and no one knew what was going on. The police said they were waiting on the volunteers to arrive. The crowd was tightly packed (still held on 4th) when a bunch of people started pushing. It was bad. This is the only time that I was actually scared of being in the crowd. They broke-thru the barriers (steel fencing) and everybody just started running. We ran up on the concrete steps around the Native American Museum to get out of the crush of people. Eventually we worked our way across Independence Ave to the Mall and were about 12 people/rows back. You can see our location spot on the map. We were able to see the stage and podium but needed the jumbotron to be able to tell who was who. About 8:00 am they played the Sunday Welcome Concert on the jumbotron which gave us something to do while we waited. About 8:30 am they announced that the parade route was full and closed. We did not know at the time- but they closed entry to the Mall about 9:30 am. The program actually started around 10:00 am (musics, choirs, and seating of dignitaries).