This week, Mrs. Rieux and I are joining millions of our fellow Americans heading toward Washington, D.C., to see our forty-fourth President--my former law school professor--inaugurated. I'd like to record the events of our nine-day trip in diaries; even if no one reads them, at least I'll have a nice scrapbook.
But if you're interested in following along as two Obama volunteers take a trip to the Inauguration and points beyond, read on....
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This time can be different, because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you, because you are tired of being disappointed, and you're tired of being let down. You're tired of hearing promises made and plans proposed in the heat of a campaign, only to have nothing change when everyone goes back to Washington.
Nothing changes because lobbyists just write another check or politicians start worrying about how to win the next election instead of why they should or because they focus on who's up and who's down instead of who matters.
And while Washington is consumed with the same drama and divisions and distractions, another family puts up a "for sale" sign in their front yard, another factory shuts its doors, another soldier waves goodbye as he leaves on another tour of duty in a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged, and goes on and on and on.
But in this election, at this moment, you are standing up all across this country to say "not this time, not this year." The stakes are too high and the challenges too great to play the same Washington game with the same Washington players and somehow expect a different result.
This time must be different. This time we have to turn the page. This time we have to write a new chapter in American history. This time we have to seize the moment.
Sunday must have wrung the energy out of us, because we slept late. 8:00, 9:00 came and went; we finally rolled off the air mattress at 9:45, and it was 11:15 by the time Mrs. Rieux, her Cousin D, and I staggered out of the door of D's condo and hit the road for the necessary visit to the McLean, Virginia, home of D's father, Uncle T.
The four of us proceeded to a Thai place in Tyson Corner for a lunch and catch-up session with T, who wanted a full run-down of the all-too-exciting Senate race that we Minnesotans have undergone this year. The green curry disposed of, we dropped T back in McLean and got dropped ourselves on Constitution Avenue, north of the Capitol.
Squinting into the cold breeze, we headed eastward toward the Hart Senate Office Building, where Minnesota Senator (the only one we've got at the moment) Amy Klobuchar was holding a reception for visiting Minnesotans. One ominous sign, though, was that as we shuffled past senate office buildings, every entrance came complete with a line of shivering citizens snaking hundreds of feet out the door; the security checkpoints inside were clearly having trouble handling the increased traffic. When we got to the Hart, a savvy visitor led us around to a back entrance where the wait was "only" a half-hour.
This led to our arrival at the Klobuchar office, which was full to bulging with our fellow Minnesotan tourists--twenty minutes before the planned 4:00 end of the reception. The very last cookie set out in the office was literally grabbed at the very moment I reached for it.
On the up side, we heard a rumor that there might be some Inauguration tickets left over, and that a line was forming to claim them (when they were relased--allegedly at four) in the back corner of the office. We had, indeed, noticed that all of the other offices we'd walked by--Lugar, Brownback, Feinstein--had had "NO EXTRA TICKETS" signs taped to their windows. But in the Klobuchar office we got in on the ground floor, jumping into line soon enough to put ourselves in terrific position to snap up any tickets the Klobuchar staffers saw fit to throw to the crowd.
We thus spent yet another hour standing in a line--although, happily, this one was inside a warm office and allowed plenty of Minnesota Nice commiseration. The guy ahead of us told us he had worked in the Hart building as a member of Paul Wellstone's Senate staff, though that apparently hadn't scored him a ticket this year. The guy told us of a problem he'd run into during his stint in DC: he'd found that Metro fare cards are touchy things--hold them too close to a cell phone, and they can de-magnetize. I reached into my jacket pocket at that moment and realized I had my Metro card, with $10 still on it, stacked right on my cell phone. Uh-oh...
Predictably, at 4:30 a Klobuchar staffer arrived and announced: "I don't know if you've heard, but there aren't any leftover tickets." (If we had heard, pal, why in the heck do you think we'd be standing here?) As a consolation prize, he offered us official Inauguration invitations and programs. We're still not sure if that was worth ninety minutes of standing in line.
We debated where to go next. Mrs. Rieux suggested the Smithsonian, which we'd heard was open until six, but I suggested a less ambitious plan--to walk to the official Inauguration memorabilia shop and then take the Metro to our next appointment, a dinner party at the Rhode Island Avenue apartment of Cousin D's fiancé. A quick cell-phone call to the missus' sister back in Minneapolis gave us the address of the "swag store," and then it was back out into the breezy twenty-degree cold for another long walk. (My Minnesota heritage notwithstanding, I'm afraid that the Minneapolis and St. Paul skyways have apparently rendered me disgustingly soft when it comes to cold weather. Two measly half-hour walks in twenty-degree weather and I was desperately in need of warm indoor air. My seventh-grade self would be utterly disgusted with me.)
We proceeded to blow well over a hundred bucks on official Inauguration-branded t-shirts, buttons and mugs (gotta have something to give to hosts on this trip as presents), and then it was back through the--augh!--cold to catch a Metro northward.
Predictably, my Metro card had demagnetized.
Eventually we arrived, cold and disheveled, at our Rhode Island Avenue party. Cousin D and her fiancé, longtime DC-ers (and lucky-duck Inauguration ticket recipients), had put together several Indian dishes, and a crowd of their friends tucked in appreciatively. Cousin L showed up for an early birthday celebration; her birthday is Tuesday, and she mentioned that this year was going to be a lot more pleasant than the birthday she celebrated in 2001.
Finally, Cousin L, the missus, and I fought our way back through the constant traffic jam that is Washington, D.C., during this Inauguration Week. Back at D's place, we're putting together our supplies and plans for our trip to the big show tomorrow. Here goes nothing....
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