I was there.

Sometime in the late afternoon/evening-ish hours of George W. Bush's final full day in office, I got a phonecall from Fink. He and Travis had devised a last minute plan that would allow us all to attend the inauguration of President Obama without having to deal with the insane amount of people expected to clog the Metro rail and local hotels--or the fact that every Virginia-to-D.C. traffic artery would be shut down on Tuesday.

Fink works, quite conveniently, in an Arlington office building on the Potomac about 2 blocks from the Key bridge into Georgetown. With his parking garage transponder, we'd be able to safely park about as close as possible to the city, then just walk into D.C.; and with the hope that none of his co-workers would be working (or, at least, working early) on such an historic day, we'd be able to camp on the floor of his office and be gone before any pesky co-workers would reasonably be expected in. Three sleeping bags, some warm clothes, a case of beer, some Eagle Rare, and several packs (and types) of smokes were all we needed to experience history with as little bullshit on the side as humanly possible.

This was the sunrise behind the Washington monument as we made our way towards the Capital.



And this was the view from our spot on the mall. That little white speck at the top of the picture is the Captial dome. Despite how bad you might think our position was, there were at least 3-4 times as many people behind us as there were in front of us.