In-depth Inaugural Coverage

0Josh • 20th Jan 2005 • blog entries, travel

Its almost 11 again this evening, and what a full day we’ve had here in Washington DC. We left the house this morning and arrived at my Aunt Chris’ office around 8:30. Again, she works with Alaska Congressman Don Young, and there was a reception in his committee room. This was a room that you see all the time on C-SPAN. There were desks with microphones for about 50 congressmen with Don Young sitting at the top in the middle as the chair. For the breakfast all the tables on the audience floor were filled with buffet tables, and people were eating everywhere. There were 2 plasma screens on the side walls of the room, and a big huge projector in the front with ABC news on. Lydia and I left the breakfast around 9:30 to start heading to the capital, the inauguration started at 11:30.

One problem that we knew in advance was that Chris’ office building was on the other side of the mall than the entrance to our seats were. We were going to have to walk three blocks down to find an open road. We were then directed another four blocks down, and then when I asked for directions to the specific gate, we were given the advice to take a city bus!! The public gates were PACKED each with well over 5,000 people standing in lines that were blocks and blocks long. We didn’t think at this rate two hours were going to be long enough to get us in. We headed back up to the capital to try and see where we should enter.

We knew that we had an advantage in getting in because of our seat location and that only about 2% of the people there had seats as close as we did. I figured one of the city cops would know which way to direct us. At one point in time after I showed a cop our tickets, and was walking away a lady saw our section color, said “Orange huh…wow let me see those!” and started grabbing for them to “help us”. I pulled the tickets towards my body and kept walking. We walked back the 7 blocks, and were basically where we started when someone gave us some correct and useful information. They told us about a gate on the other side of Chris’ building that was for the media and would let us to our seats.

We got to the red gate, and instead of seeing over 5,000 people in line, there were about 50. We were able to go through security and get to our seats in about 15 minutes. It was AMAZING, and we were thrilled that we would make it in. We found our seats and waited for the ceremony to start. We were seated in the media section, and there was press from all areas of the world there. We saw many Japanese reporters there recording their coverage and giving commentary.

We had a great time taking pictures of the speakers and soaking the entire experience in. We could see the president and members of his family from where we were sitting, and with our camera were able to get some great torso shots of the president while he was giving the inaugural address. The only real disappointing part was our communication with KICY. I had my dad’s cell phone and my aunt’s cell phone. My dad’s phone had a *major* battery issue (it only would last for about 10 minutes), and only while we were at the inauguration did I have a problem with my aunt’s phone. Both of these issues resulted in me not being able to bring any coverage of the event live until after it was over. Apparently there were some issues with the satellite feeds back at the radio station and they were unable to air much of the ceremony as well. All of this was disappointing to me, I made some promos for our coverage before I left Nome, and even heard that people were planning on listening because they were unable to get to a TV. I hope we didn’t let them down.

As we were leaving the capital after the inauguration, there were hundreds of thousands of people all trying to exit out of a few small exits. On our way out of the capital area we saw the only and only Don King in person, not once but we ran into him twice. Our next destination was back to Chris’ office which was just across the street from where we exited. Security into the building as amazingly slow, so Lydia and I decided to look for other routes in. We found another door that actually had a line that was moving, and made it in not to long after.

Back in Don Young’s committee room there was a lunch going on for his supporters. We had a great meal and got to enjoy more time in the fancy governmental room. We decided to head back home around 2:30, and watch the parade on TV. After watching tv and everyone taking quick naps, Chris took us out to dinner at a steak house not far from her neighborhood. We went back and watched the series premier of the apprentice!

Tomorrow will be our last day in DC, and we will be taking a tour of the capital, I’ll have an interview with Alaska Senator (and 4th in succession to the president) Ted Stevens, and then we will be seeing the monuments and sights we haven’t gotten to yet. It should be fun!

Take a look at the article below that I found on the Seattle Times’ website, it talks about some Journalists not being able to make it in!!