Recounting the Big Day upon returning home

Well, I made it back, after setting out to get to the Capitol building at 6 a.m. I took the bus to 24th St. and Pennsylvania Avenue, then got on the Metro at Foggy Bottom. 

At L'enfant Plaza Metro, I got off and stood in a crowd of hundreds that wasn't moving out of the station and that was increaing in size with each passing train. Ah, so this is what they mean by "crush-level" crowds, I thought. I got back on the next train and took it one more stop, to Federal Center, which was a little less crowded because it had just been reopened after earlier closures.

Not so on the street outside the blue gate entrance -- "crush-level" was a mild description. Four blocks worth of people standing in line shoulder to shoulder 20 across were waiting to enter the Blue ticketed area, which I guessed would hold far less. It was 8 a.m., and I began to wonder about safety and the likelihood of me getting through the gate to my ticketed area. A woman in front of me began to panic because of the enclosing crowd. 

I was alone, the sole Pitt News editor with a ticket to be up front, and I pushed my way to the outside to get some air. People farther behind me started aggressively pushing, shouting and banging on a slow-moving passing car. That was it, I was done.

I walked back to the Federal Center station to figure out a plan, and when I asked someone for directions, a man named Jerome offered to walk with me. He also had a ticket to stand on the Capitol lawn up close and had decided to forfeit his chances of being close. 

We walked about 10 blocks in a crowd that filled the entire street, and pushed our way to the hill of the Washington Monument (along the way, I ran into a cameraman from KDKA-TV with political reporter John Delano, and since I recognized John and said I was from Pittsburgh, he interviewed me. They weren't the only journalists to make appearances -- always within eyesight someone was shooting professional photos or video or holding a boom microphone). We found a prime spot in the middle of the crowd -- I could see the Capitol straight ahead -- far, far away, but it was good enough. Jumbotron screens and massive speakers played the scene unfolding on the Capitol steps. 

Two hours left until the ceremony began, and it was cold and windy. Some bystanders, if not shoulder to shoulder, had sat down on the ground. A man next to me tuned an old radio he had into NPR and listened to their commentary. And nearly everyone had a camera or video camera.

At one point, a crew from ABC News pushed through, and reporter I probably should have recognized interviewed a couple from Holland standing next to us. 

"I'm proud of the passport I hold," the woman said. "But it is a great day for America."

[I'll tell you more about the ceremony itself later, but right now there's food to eat and CNN to watch and thoughts to regroup.]

After the ceremony, I trekked across seas of people (seriously, it was unbelivable -- every street, every open space, every block was packed shoulder to shoulder with the unendlessly shuffling crowd) to the Lincoln Memorial, then down to the Potomac riverfront and back to Georgetown. On the way, I saw thousands of bikers and walkers, some playing drums and chanting, some talking on cell phones, some selling hadnwarmers or souveniers. But most were quiet, marching away from this massive gathering to disperse back into the real world.

It's hard to put into words what being in a crowd of millions feels like. It's scary, it's hard to tell what's around you, it's intuitive and blind in the way you walk with the flow. It's surreal and incredibly unpleasant at the same time, especially with freezing temperatures.

It's also hard to put into words what it's like to witness history such as this. Even though I watched Obama take the oath of office from more than a mile away, I feel like he had shared his moment intimately with the citizens who chose him as their leader.