Obamapalooza

[eaglesvet]

I'm hoping I can post my Inauguration souveniers that I bought on the DC streets. The first post will show two buttons I found almost immediately, on our way from the bus to the Mall. The middle one lights up with flashing white lights behind it...I couldn't pass it up!! The top one is a bit more formal, so I decided on that to balance out my outfit. The rectangular item with the famous "Hope" portrait of Obama is my nifty refrigerator magnet.

[eaglesvet]

This is the Official Inauguration Program that I bought after the event, as Chris and I were attempting to make our way back from the parade route to the bus. I even got it on a close-out special from a street vendor! No, really, he was the first and only person I even saw selling them, so I would've paid him more than face value for it...it was just my luck he was trying to be done with them by that time of the day!

I realize now that I never finished telling y'all about the rest of our adventures after the Swearing-In Ceremony...so I'll have to get down to that hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

Alright, the Program is too large to upload. Let me see what I can do about that. Maybe nothing...

[MikeA]

If exception can't be made for your "upload" let me know, I'll make plenty of room for it on my site and provide you with a link to it.

[Ive always been a dreamer]

Those buttons are cool, ev. Yeah, I have been waiting for the rest of your story.

Another option with downloading your program is to scan it as PDF file. You should be able to easily 'shrink' the PDF to an acceptable size. Also, if you upload the file to Photobucket, it will shrink it automatically.

[eaglesvet]

OK, I just received some speedy assistance from the wonderful Ticky, and I am up and running again. Here's the Official Program:

[sodascouts]

Evet, thanks for posting those. I'm sure you'll treasure them forever!

[eaglesvet]

2nd Note to Self: Next time, try to arrive with some kind of tickets in hand---ideally, to both the Swearing-In Ceremony as well as the Inaugural Parade. Tickets to a concert or even a ball would be icing on the cake. This is assuming, of course, that the "Inauguration-Gate" ticket fiasco of 2009 is fully investigated and resolved in due time before 2013!
~~~

So, as Chris and I watched the end of the Inaugural festivities from a slightly more centralized area of the National Mall than where we stood previously, many other people continued to stream out. When the video coverage ended, Chris decided she really wanted to walk with part of the sea of humanity toward the Washington Monument to check it out. Easier said than done, as that was also in the direction of the roadway out, 14th Street. But, after scrambling up and over a couple of barricades between the street and the Constitutional Gardens surrounding the Monument, we were home free! In the several minutes we looked around the base of the Monument, we noted quite a few groups of college students and of foreign families doing the same, and taking photographs to commemorate the occasion.

[eaglesvet]

As we left the WM, we could see several marching bands rehearsing for the Inaugural Parade in the adjacent park known as The Ellipse, located across Constitution Ave. just north of where we were. That's when I told Chris of the plan I had been harboring of my own...if time permitted, I really wanted to see at least part of the parade. Well, according to my watch, time was about to permit... although I could tell that Chris was just a touch less enthusiastic than I was. But, it was only 1:00, and we didn't have to be back on the bus util 3:30...what could go wrong? The way I looked at it was this: if we could plan it so our route back to the bus intersected the parade route for any number of blocks, my wish would be fulfilled--plus we would board the bus on time.

So, off we started. We soon realized that even though we needed to go north to Pennsylvania Ave. (the parade route), and then eventually east (to our bus on 9th St.), the fences and barricades were only permitting the crowd to exit the Constitution Gardens one way--that being four long blocks west of us at 18th St. Plan or no plan, we had to get out to get on with it, so we went along with the rest of the herd trudging through the Gardens--eventually, s l o w l y, funneling into one of the exit points at 18th St.

[eaglesvet]

More to follow...

[sodascouts]

I figured there was more - looking forward to it!