Inblauguration: 2009

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Friday, January 23, 2009

The (empty) fountain in front of the Library of Congress

Waiting in line for our tickets on Monday morning.

For each entrance of the Cannon House Office Building, a line of people waiting for tickets spiralled around at least two sides of the building. This picture actually shows two lines, each going to a different entrance.

Heading towards the Capitol and at the Capitol

This is on Monday when we were going to get our tickets. These are the first things we saw in the District.

The signs in the first picture are pointing the way to the various entrance gates for Inaugural ticket holders.

Union Station

Looking back as we were exiting and from across the street.

On the trip from the airport to Potomac

Views from our car from the airport to Potomac on Sunday.

Posting from our cab

More pics to come update

I now have the pictures from the disc that was in Karen's lost/found wallet which I'l be posting later today.

Karen purchased her camera for the trip but we didn't realize that the disc was only 32mb. So of course she ran out of space pretty early. We couldn't copy the pictures to my phone because the camera disc would not fit and neither one of us brought our laptops either. We bought another disc Wednesday on the way to the Metro Rail station but we didn't take many pictures since we didn't go back into the District.

My dad told me that he was asked by someone following our trip why we decided to go to the airport so early on Wednesday. Here's why: By the time we got to Union Station, we only had about 3 hours of free time before the last train left that would get us to the airport on time. We had our luggage with us, so we were standing in line to check the bags in at the train station before we could go walk around some more. As we waited, we considered the time required to wait in line to check our luggage into - and then out of - bag-check, we would have been left with only about 1.5 -2 hours of free time. Additionally, this plan didn't leave much leeway for any unexpected delays, such as the fire drill that had taken place earlier that morning in the train station before we arrived or just because of the crush of people trying to get out of DC.

On the other hand, we had plenty of time to spare for delays, we would save the money required to check the bags and, as tired as we were, we could relax at the airport waiting for the flight if we just took the next train to the airport. So, we went straight on to the airport.

As it turns out, we basically traded (at most) 2 hours of additional time in the District for 3 hours of additional time at the airport, which we spent eating, talking to Pete, relaxing and posting pictures.

Our suitcases exploded

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Ode to Aretha

Laura Simpson sent me her daughters' and her Ode to Aretha:

I love it. Can I get one of those to cover this hathead?

More pics to come

We got back around 11:00 pm last night and the girls were already asleep so they stayed the night again with their grandmother. We saw them today (see next post).

Karen had a disc in her wallet with a some more pictures but the wallet fell out of her purse on the plane. Luckily, an airline employee found it when they cleaned the plane and left it in Tampa. She got it back today and I'll add the pictures after I get the disc from her.

Seeing our girls

Tuesday was a good day for them.

Ice on my truck and beside our house this morning

It went down to 30 degrees last night but has climbed to 61.

Me on the MARC train from Union Station to BWI

Sending you an update, our train tickets and the conductor. As for my expression in the third picture: I felt fine, I was jus' concentratin' on my blauggin'.

Back at home.

And it's almost as cold here. It was 32 degrees when we got home.

Our flight waiting for the luggage carousel to start.

We slept in and then visited with our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. I, Jay and his family. By the time we got to Union Station, we only had a couple hours of free time, there was a crush of people leaving DC, and we were tired, so we decided to just continue on to BWI. When we got there, we got dinner. While we were eating, we spoke to the man sitting at the table next us. Pete is a Smithsonian tour guide from Oregon who was going home after leading a tour. He told us about his tour with group of high school juniors and seniors who were studying journalism and (I think) history and how it had been a truly great experience for him.
A benefit to checking in so early is that our two checked bags were two of the first 10 out of the chute.

We've arrived in Tampa

We flew south and banked to the right - our side - so that we did a 180 around downtown. It was a beautiful site.

The flight back to TPA

Most of us were retuning home from attending the Inaugural events. The man sitting next to me was at the parade and was located along that part of the route where the President, Vice-President and their wives were walking. He was the first person we met that had attended the parade.