Look, all the balloons and bunting are gone and the country’s getting down to business. The inauguration is over, right. But can I help it if I’m still excited? This post as been clotting the hose for me all week — I haven’t been able to think about anything else until I got this thing out. So forgive me if it seems like old news, it’s just too amazing to let it all go …

We spent the night before the inauguration in a federal judge’s chambers *right* next to the White House. The chambers were in the Court of Federal Claims, which is attached to Dolly Madison’s house, right next to Lafayette Square. Here’s a map.

This is the (blurry, crappy, yet panoramic) view from our window:

Click on the picture to see it much larger. The bright white blob furthest to the left is the White House, the next white blob is the Presidential reviewing stand for the parade.

when I say “spent the night in a federal judge’s chambers,” I mean exactly that. We took food, air mattresses and sleeping bags into a federal judge’s office the night before and just camped out before the city really shut down. The amazing part is that none of this was pre-planned. The judge left a few pies cooling on her windowsill and we just shimmied right on in, no drama, no fuss. Weird, huh?

Jokes, jokes … My girlfriend’s good friend actually works for the judge and had registered us with security a week ahead of time.

Once we got in and got settled, I had the same old anxiety attack that I have every time something exciting is about to happen. Every time I’m near something huge and cool like the Mermaid Parade or a NASCAR race — pretty much anytime a lot of people get together to get excited — I just OD on the fumes and I can’t sit still. I’m panicked, terrified that I’ll miss something. I can’t sit still at parties, can’t just watch a rock show. I’ve got to pace and crisscross. I’m a dog in a Bible belt butcher shop 30 seconds after the Rapture, snapping all the sausages I can find.

Tortured metaphor, but hopefully it works.

So as soon as everyone settled into the judge’s chambers I had to be out and into everything all at once. The streets were so ALIVE in DC that night, people moving into position and setting up shop.

I saw this sign right outside the courthouse, tied to the side of somebody’s bike:

DC had never felt like this to me before — full of excited people, all happy about more or less the same thing. We joined a protest at the last Bush inauguration and the spirits were high, sure, but it was full of dirty hippies with giant puppets and attitudes to match. And no matter how much fun it might be to protest the President, it’s more incredible to be excited about the President, to actually know we’re getting a real leader that we want, need, and respect.

My girlfriend is fundamentally allergic to cold and crowds and stayed in watching the whole thing on TV the next day. Not me.

You know what’s always warm and comfortable? A casket. I figured I’ve got enough time later to be comfortable. I got about three hours of sleep that night, and low-grade sleep at that. I kept dreaming that I was sleeping in the judge’s chambers and the spirit of Barack Obama was standing over me and telling me how disappointed he was that I couldn’t get up in time and celebrate with the rest of America.

I woke up at 5 AM and met up with a friend from The Moth — we rolled downhill, two flakes in an avalanche of people thundering onto the National Mall before dawn. We made it about to the carousel, sort of two thirds of the way to the Capitol and set up camp. Everything was cool for two or three hours there, just watching reruns of the HBO Inaugural concert on the Jumbotron.

Then I had to go to the bathroom. I have a bladder the size of a sparrow’s and although it would have been warmer to just pee on my feet, I crossed the mall to use the toilets.

When people talk about this thing, there’s 3 things they mention:

1) Crowds

2) Cold

3) Hope and Inspiration

Everyone’s story is pretty similar, so here’s my take on those 3 factors:

Crowds

It took me about an hour to make it from the center of the mall over to the toilets on the left-hand side as you face the Capitol. It was a giant soft crush the whole way, a lot of “excuse mes” and “oop, sorrys” until the whole exercise was just pointless. Imagine the L train at rush hour multiplied by 2 million, plus eight years of shame and frustration ending.

As soon as I accidentally stepped on a lady’s foot, she shouted “JUST SAY EXCUSE ME, DAMN, WHER ARE YOUR MANNERS”

Some other guy started laughing and said “Woman, you thought you was comin’ down here to NOT get bumped into?”

It took about 45 minutes to make it half the way back to where I had been standing. I never saw my friend from the Moth again that day. People got seperated fromt heir friends and family all over the place, and a few folks acted like it was everyone else’s fault it had happened. Which I guess it sort of was, but it’s just not something you can get bent out of shape about.

It was so crowded that when Obama took the stage and we all cheered, I couldn’t find a place to bring my arms down.

Cold

I slipped some chemical hand warmers into my shoes and gloves. Those saved me, barely. It was so, so cold out there, so cold that the body heat of two million people didn’t even help much. It was too cold to sweat, and it hurt to suck in my breath to yell. That didn’t stop me.

Hope and Inspiration

I’ve never felt anything like it. Even just seeing the inauguration on the Jumbotron, with the new First Family a few inspirational specks in the distance, I couldn’t help but cry when Arethra Franklin sang. To think that this country has come this far, and to see the shame and embarassment of the last eight years just fall away and know, just KNOW that the country’s back in the right hands … there’s no words for it.

It was like being at an enormous black church service. Every time Obama made a good point about 500,000 people said “Amen,” or “yes, YES.” Hearing that rumble, the rumble of relieved and excited people who for the first time in their lives have an actual, natural leader, and feeling that rumble actually press into my skin — that’s the closest thing to the sound of heaven’s trumpets, I think.

On the bus on the way back from DC I ate a sandwich and drank a bottle of water. In New York, I was in a rush to get off and left my trash under my seat. Then I thought of a stern and disappointed Barack Obama and threw my trash away.

He’s both a man and an idea. And I really believe him when he says that we’re going to get each other through tough times together. I really, really do.

I want to remember Barack Obama’s inauguration until the day I die and I never want to forget any part of it. There’s a bond between everyone that was there and everyone that cared. Even if we keep circling the bowl as a nation, it was such a beautiful, amazing day for the country, for an American spirit I thought was gone forever.