This is the story of how I drove 1,300 miles to watch Obama’s inauguration, and missed the whole thing.

Last winter, I went home to Iowa and got a job working for Barack Obama’s caucus campaign. After one month of intense campaigning, I got to witness his electrifying victory speech. Last summer, I traveled to Denver to see his nomination before a crowd of 80,000.

When Obama won in November, I decided to travel to DC to see the inauguration. I just wanted to be part of the crowd that day, witness to the historic moment. As the day drew nearer, I even managed to get tickets for my friends and me. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw the tickets. They were Purple Tickets, meaning we would be just a few hundred meters from Obama.

On the day of the inauguration we decide to go early. At 4:50AM the Metro is packed. Downtown, crowds move through the streets. There are barricades scattered over the area, and police can be found on every corner. We watch as 30 policemen ride by on bikes.

Police on the street at 5AM

When we arrive at the purple gate with our purple tickets, the line is already stretching around the corner and down the street. It leads into an underground tunnel. There are cops blocking off the tunnel, and they won’t allow anyone in unless they have a purple ticket. We jog down the tunnel to get a better spot in line. By the time we get there, we’re covered in sweat.

The tunnel is lit by neon lights and covered in a thick layer of dirt. We settle down to start waiting, knowing that the gates open at 9:00AM. There’s one security guard and she’s sleeping in her car with the motor on. As we stand in line, we watch a flow of people walk past us to take their own place in the line.

Above us, the largest political demonstration in history is gathering before the steps of the capital. Two million onlookers are filing into the mall, stretching from the capital to the Lincoln Memorial. We could not be more excited.

The tunnel

During the wait, we start talking to the people around us. We meet little elderly women from North Carolina, Iraq war veterans, and Obama organizers. Everyone is thrilled at the opportunity of a lifetime.

We meet Debby, a middle-aged black woman who came alone from San Francisco to see Obama. She bought a huge winter coat to deal with the 20 degree weather. After hours of standing, she decides to sit in the dirt. Many in the tunnel are trembling in the cold.

Debby from San Francisco

9AM comes and goes. The flow of humanity walking past us to join the line continues uninterrupted. At one point, we count 60 people walking by in 60 seconds. We estimate that there are perhaps 7,000 people in line behind us.

The guard who is sleeping in her car wakes up, turns on her siren, and drives away. Conviction grows in the crowd that we will keep our place in line. Some people hold hands along the line to keep anyone from jumping in. Someone says, “That’s why we’re not moving forward, because people keep cutting!”

At 9:30AM, the line has still barely moved. Every once in awhile we move forward a few feet, and there’s a cheer in the line. Outside the tunnel, the sun rises.

Two in our group decide to go out and get coffee. After 20 minutes, they still haven’t come back. They call and tell us in worried voices that they can’t get through the mob. When they do make it back, they come with an image of the chaos outside the tunnel. They describe being caught in the mob, unable to move. In their panic, they left the coffee.

The cops are gone.

Chaos outside the tunnel

At 10AM, things are getting worse in the tunnel. One woman walks down the line shouting “Look around you at who doesn’t belong! Point them out! Throw them out of the line!” From somewhere deep in the tunnel, we can hear shouting. We continue to haltingly progress, somewhat faster now.

People continue to flow past us, and all of them have purple tickets. We start to wonder, “Should we warn them about how long the line is?” We estimate that there are at least 10,000 people in the line behind us.

Finally, we make enough progress that we’re on the street instead of in the tunnel. We cheer as we see police ride by on bikes. There are other police and FBI agents wandering around aimlessly. By 10:30AM, the line is losing cohesion.

I stand on a windowsill to get a better view, and I know at once that it’s hopeless. The line leads to an intersection which is filled with hundreds of people. Some of them are standing on cars and yelling. This crowd stands in between us and the purple gate, and everyone in the crowd has purple tickets. I can’t see any cops at all.

The mob standing between us and the purple gate

At 11:00AM, we give up. By now, the mall is full and all of its entrances are barricaded. Everywhere we go, there are angry crowds huddled around the security gates. When we had planned to travel to DC, I knew I just wanted to be part of the crowd. Now I realize that it’s impossible. I was doomed by my Purple Ticket.

We begin aimlessly wandering through DC looking for a television. The only way is to move away from the crowds and into the DC Chinatown. We find a Chinese restaurant named “First Eat Restaurant,” and sit down.

The TV is black and white, and the radio is playing pop radio above us. While Yo Yo Ma plays at the capital, we hear Let It Be by the Beatles. While Rick Warren speaks, we hear “It’s too late to apologize” by One Republic.

We watched the inauguration on the tv next to the fiberoptic christmas tree.

Obama starts to speak, and when I ask the staff to turn off the radio, they misunderstand and turn it up. The staff sits down in front of us and begins having a heated discussion in Cantonese. The food is terrible.

One of my friends opens her fortune cookie and finds, “Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.” She also gets food poisoning.

Later that day, we see a statement from the police chief of DC claiming that everyone who had a ticket got in. We pack our bags and begin the twenty-hour drive home.

The satellite photo shows plenty of space in the ticketed sections

Afterwards, we learned what had happened. The scanners at the purple gate failed and were never repaired. There were several medical emergencies confusing the situation, as people fell ill due to the cold. After it was clear that the main gate was not going to open, a back gate was opened to let some people in. Similar problems plagued the other gates.

A few of my friends fought through the mob and managed to get in. They found that the purple section was less than half full, and there was extra room in the yellow section as well. There was room for thousands more, people just weren’t being let in.

There could easily have been a riot among the tens of thousands who were denied access, but we were hopeful to the end. We couldn’t imagine that there would be absolutely no plan about how to get people in, or that the authorities would throw up their hands and disappear. I can’t help but think of all the people we met in line, many of whom had traveled thousands of miles on the promise of the historic moment.

On the trip back, we were unable to stop ourselves from pouring over every detail of the morning. What if we had given up earlier? What if we had found a different entrance? What if we had never been given tickets. These questions won’t help, and really, our exclusion from the event wasn’t the tragedy it seems like. Obama was inaugurated without us, and I’ve been overwhelmed by everything he’s done in his first two days.

My experience of the inauguration was just as real as those who were on the mall. I was there in the tunnel at 5AM with other unlucky souls who received purple tickets. I wanted to be part of the crowd, and I was.