The inauguration was amazing. A big love fest. I am a California native, so although I have been living on the east coast for over a year, I am still not accustomed to this cold weather. Luckily my mom is a hiker, backpacker, and snow-camper. She lives in REI. So she made sure we were prepared. I had on a great base layer (thermals), leggings, and ski pants. On the upper half of my body I had on about 4 or 5 layers. I also had on snow boots and we had hand and foot warmers just in case. Oh, wait it gets better! I was wearing my mom's gloves. No they were not your normal gloves. I had a pair of liner gloves, a regular pair, and a pair of mittens on top. They were 3-in-1 gloves. So needless to say, I did not freeze. However we walked and walked and walked. The metro station we planned to get off on was closed (there were too many people exiting). So instead of exiting at L'Enfant plaza, we exited two stops down at China Town. So at this point we were north of the mall and had to walk ALLLL the way around the parade route. We walked about 2-3 miles to get to the mall. It was such a great feeling though. When will I ever be able to walk down the middle of the street in DC with thousands of other people? Needless to say, we had a ball. It was a day I will always remember. We walked another couple of miles to get to a metro station to get home. The only negative event of the whole day was my dad getting separated. He got a phone call, walked off, and in two minutes he could not find his way back. There were that many people coming. February 20, 2009. A day I will always remember!
