Cold. Dark. Single-minded. Happy. Awe-inspiring. And, lastly, hopeful for our country and ourselves.
I had developed a healthy paranoia in the days and hours leading up to leaving for DC and the inaugural about the cold, the crowds, and my ability or lack of it to capture history or some of it on my two cameras, a point-and-shoot Olympus and this Pentax I drove to New York City to buy the Sunday before. I spoke to the IBMer whom I report to at work the next day, and he said, "You drove to New York? You have more energy than I do." From someone who runs 5 miles or more most mornings, that comment made me realize how energized I was. My friend Randy's comment was even funnier. I was back in time for the first of the two NFL playoff games that day. He said, "You drove up and back to New York to buy the camera? Dude, you might not want to tell anyone that." Randy has a way of putting things.
Though I had executed a transfer of wealth from myself to REI in the days before, when confronted with the boots-on-the-ground cold of it all, I quickly found I had not done as effective a job at covering myself as had Schwarzenegger in Predator. In my case, Schwarzenegger wouldn't have made it past the river bank scene because his exposed feet would have given him away. I didn't neglect to consider the feet, I just had never stood on frozen ground for 10 hours straight, or I suppose, even 3 hours straight, at least not in some time, not being a hunter, a skier, or someone who builds elaborate things out of snow. But, by about the 3rd hour the cold had definitely made it through the soles of my boots and the "smart" wool socks, which obviously had been advanced a grade too quickly. So then that left the epidermis, subcutaneous layers, and capillaries beneath trying their darndest to maintain 98.6. I believe after 10 hours they mostly succeeded. But they weren't happy and made that clear. It had been some time since I had experience the prolonged feeling of knives, is the best way I can explain it, stabbing at your feet. Stomping your feet increased the pain, yet everyone seemed to do it periodically just to remind themselves what a bad idea it was.
I left at 2:30am from White Marsh (about 20 minutes north of Baltimore), and was ticked at myself that I hadn't left at 2:00. I lost some time messing with the Garmin. It had performed brilliantly over the long trip down to Nashville to see the Ravens. And now the power cord was completely non-functioning. The light which is supposed to glow from the cord when plugged in was as dark as the rest of my car. It reminded me of that scene from Breakfast Club when the kids are sitting in a circle in the library each telling the rest what they had done to get detention, and the nerdy kid tells how, being who he was, nothing was acceptable besides an "A", and especially in shop class with all the dumb kids, and the terrified feeling when he pulled the tail to his elephant lamp and the light did not go on.
I said, "I so don't need this," and went back in the house for mapquest directions. The plan was to avoid the parking insanity at the metro, and park at my IBM colleague's house very near the Shady Grove metro. I had his handwritten map, but it followed interstate 70, which was still closed due to a 35-car pile-up the day before. Honestly, Baltimore got no more than an inch of snow and 35 cars run into one another. Mapquest took me down 95, then 270, and then to MD 355, where I would once again intersect Brad's directions, but from the other direction, I didn't realize. And therefore I turned the wrong direction on Redland, and instead of ending up at Brad's house, I ended up at the metro. I was getting good and paranoid at missing the first metro train - departure, 4am - and so I parked in a nearby neighborhood (still not wanting anything of the metro parking, especially the attempt to get out later) and walked back. I got to the Shady Grove metro at about 3:40 or so, and saw this, or at least this was the view looking back down the entry tunnel from the ticket machines. The line of us at the ticket machines looked like the next pic:
And with that, more later, as I have to go make some money. But I'll leave you with this shot, after my metro train had dropped me at Union Staion in Washington, DC at about 5am, and the 10-minute walk or so to the "yellow" gate, for we yellow ticketholder. About 300 yellow people had arrived ahead of me, but I considered this a coup of sorts, and I relaxed a little. I knew I would get in. And I knew i would have a good spot. With that single-minded aim now largely accomplished, I was able to breathe, look around me, grab the Pentax, try one of the "night" settings I had read about, and hope for the best:
I hope you remembered to take your wallet;-)
Posted by: Dead Center Dave | January 25, 2009 at 11:43 PM