I Was (Nearly) There

Joshua sent me this great aerial photo of the mall on the morning of Inauguration Day. It must have been taken quite early because the place was more crowded than that. The Washington Post has a photo here that was taken at 11:19 a.m. Well, I've doctored the image J sent me so you can see where we were (you really need to click on the picture to appreciate it):


I marked the silver section by outlining it in red; that's where we would have been standing had we gotten in. The star marks as far as we got. The place was full and the line stopped by 10:30. Marti walked ahead and learned that nobody was going nowhere, so we turned around and walked back through the 3rd street tunnel and across town to Kyle's apartment. We got there just in time to see it on the TV.

Most of the stuff being sold on the street had the slogan "I was there." We joked by saying "I was almost there" or "I was nearly there." But, truthfully, I felt like I was there the entire time--even when we were walking away from the gate. Below is a shot taken around the corner from where the star is (you can see these buses in the aerial photo):



And here's my favorite photo; this is walking through the 3rd street tunnel underneath the Mall: