What else?

For four days last January, I wandered the streets near the National Mall in sub-zero weather to take in the sights and inauguration celebrations. Around the Capitol, police cars and military humvees idled, blocking off all vehicular traffic at intersections. An endless stream of chartered buses disgorged their passengers by the Lincoln and World War 2 memorials so they could get their trophy snapshots.

Away from the Mall, it was always eerily quiet and devoid of pedestrians. I had renewed respect for the few remaining homeless people, huddling by a government building or pacing in the middle of a boulevard, as I went to and from my hotel in a down coat and layers of long johns under my pants.

The Allen Lee with its peeling white exterior stood in stark contrast to the modern dorms that housed students across the street in Foggy Bottom. It was the only affordable place I could find after Obama was elected. I shared my heated/unheated room with a hungry mouse and crossed paths with some of the regular tenants, including a welfare mom who’d often cuss at her three young children. They were a reminder that as auspicious an occasion as it was problems still exist.

The big day

On Inauguration Day, I woke at 3 a.m. and went to the lobby to grab a copy of the Washington Post, which the Allen Lee was charging $2 that day. The front desk man and I got to talking, and I asked him if he planned to attend the inauguration when his graveyard shift ended at 8 a.m. He said he’d catch it on TV even though the hotel is about a 10-minute walk to the Capitol grounds.

“It only takes one skinhead,” the burly man said, “for a stampede to happen.” This is the same guy who said he attended the Million Man March on the Mall in 1995.

A hotel guest, who I mistook at first for a bag lady in blue, entered the lobby after an early morning stroll and informed us that hundreds of people were already milling about outside. Teary-eyed from the cold, she said lots of people were walking around trying to stay warm because they didn’t have places to stay. She herself wasn’t planning to go but changed her mind. Pounding a fist on the front counter, she said she’d kick herself if she didn’t go.

On hearing that people were already outdoors, I too left the hotel, which is about a mile from the Mall and is on one of the routes that many people taking the subway would have to use to get there. Forecasters were calling for colder-than-usual temps with a nippy wind and a chance of snow.

Thousands had already formed a moving queue around the corner from the hotel and quietly headed south on Virginia St. N.W. Many more descended from other nearby arterial streets. In the dark, we were all drawn like moths to the illuminated Washington Monument.

Volunteers from the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America greeted us enthusiastically and handed out American flags. They directed us eastward toward the Capitol building. Some people had parked overnight and slept in their cars by the Mall. Others wrapped in silver emergency blankets appeared to have camped overnight. Dozens sat around the Monument as if they were camping by an open fire. Despite the crowds, people were calm and upbeat.

We kept walking and snaked along a path that had been created for us until we hit the barricades at 9th St. SW that separated the general public from the lucky 250,000 with inauguration tickets. It wasn’t so bad, I thought. We had the same view of the Capitol building except we were farther away.

Biggest mosh pit

I turned around to see where I had come from only to see a mass of people had followed to fill the empty space. But there was still room to move. An MSNBC booth had been erected and the crowd there would erupt with cheers and frantically wave their flags whenever the camera panned over them. A mob would swarm the reporter when she stepped out to get some streeters.

A section of the public area had been fenced off for the disabled. It was there I found Vietnam vet William Hayes, bundled up in a chair staring ahead at the Capitol against a cloudless horizon.

“It was worth it, ” he said, of the four-hour trek he and his wife Emma made from Warrington, N.C. “It’s an honour to witness this historic event.”

Nearby, Al Woods was snapping pictures of the Capitol as the sun was rising. The U.S. navy captain explained that he wore his uniform to the ceremony because he wanted “to salute my boss, my next commander-in-chief.” As we were chatting, a sailor approached him from out of the blue and saluted him too before moving on.

By 9 a.m., the joints in my legs started to ache from the cold. I’d sit for a while but then feel the need to move around to warm up my toes and fingers.

I wasn’t the only one aching. A mother and son kept cajoling the location manager by the NBC trailers into giving them some hand warmers, which to my surprise he was kind enough to do. Another mother tried to comfort one of her two girls sitting on a curb by the Smithsonian. I went over and gave her one of my hand warmers to slip into her daughter’s mitten. She didn’t know what it was, and I had to explain to her twice before she accepted.

When the ceremony finally began, the crowds bordered on hysteria and forgot about the cold. Many cried and others listened with heads bowed and eyes shut as Obama gave his acceptance speech.

I’m not a religious person, but the inauguration was as close to a religious experience as I’ll ever get. Like many on a pilgrimage, I had come a long way to Washington and sacrificed some creature comforts to be there for this historic day.