Flavor of the Day

I apologize that we haven't been able to write somewhat more regularly during the past couple of days. In contrast to something like, say, the conventions, which are more or less contained in one place, the events in DC are spread out all over the city, and significant amounts of one time are spent traveling and queuing.

To give you some sense for what we're dealing with, I was on the yellow line on the Metro this morning headed to L'Enfant Plaza, where I had to pick up an inauguration ticket at my friend's place. All of the sudden, as we're just meters away from the station, the conductor announces cheerily: "Sorry, L'Enfant Plaza is now closed. The next stop is Pentagon". So this train full of people, thinking they are heading to L'Efant Plaza so that they can walk over to the Mall, are instead hurtling at 60 MPH toward Virginia, where they very much don't want to be going.

When the train arrives at the Pentagon station, there are huge lines to get up the escalators toward the shuttle buses they have waiting outside. So someone gets the bright idea to begin walking up the down escalator ... and dozens of people start following him. Before long, there are two think columns of people -- black, white, the young, the old, the healthy, the frail -- marching up the down escalator, as couple a police officer looks on haplessly and helplessly. And the people are chanting, quite naturally, "Yes we can!".