Inaguration Day- Hillary Tells All
No, not Hillary Clinton. Our very own Hillary Sinn was in Washington D.C. and recounts a trying day that was the inaguration.
We considered ourselves incredibly fortunate to have scored Silver Tickets to the Inauguration in DC. We set out from our friends' apartment in NW DC at 6a and by 6:20a we were standing in a crush of people at what we thought was a holding spot for the access point to the Silver Gate. While we stood there waiting for the security gates to open (scheduled for 8a), we started to hear that Silver ticket holders needed to relocate. We managed to get out of the throng we were in and rush to where officials told us to go. Upon arrival we encountered another crush of people, gridlocked and confused about where they needed to be - these were Purple Ticket holders (Purple tickets were closer than Silver) who said we were in the wrong place. So we slithered and squeezed our way out to hunt down someone in uniform to set us straight. It was then that the most amazing thing happened: a credentialed member of the Inaugural Committee saw us with our Silver Tickets and gave us three Blue Tickets that she didn't want to go to waste. Score! Blue Tickets would get us closer to the Capitol than our Silver Tickets. We tracked down an officer who told us to cross to other side of the Mall, by way of a tunnel, to get to the Blue Gate. On our travels, my fiance spotted a group of three older African Americans who didn't have tickets - we gave them our Silver tickets and they gave us big smiles and hand warmers. We finally found our Blue Line at 8:15a. From 8:15a to 11:15a, we moved approx half of a block in the freezing cold and with no Blue Gate in sight. It started to become clear that we weren't going to make it in time. And we didn't. They closed our gate. We completely missed the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Us and 10's of thousands of others with official tickets. Apparently, the situation at the Purple Gate was even worse - our friend was stuck underground in a tunnel for 4 hours and was never admitted. That tunnel is now being referred to as The Purple Tunnel of Doom. Nobody really knows what happened. There's only anecdotal evidence from shut-outs like us. An investigation has been launched into the breakdown of security, crowd control and ticketing. If you were sitting at home, or at work watching on a tv or computer, consider yourself lucky - you had a better seat than we did.
Read more about the situation here - this was posted on Inauguration Day, the early official reports were COMPLETELY inaccurate. Be sure to read the comments following the article.
As a small consolation we were able to have a once in a lifetime dining experience at Komi, courtesy of our hosts.
At least we have a new President. That's what really matters. Hail to the Chief.
