With sore legs, sleepy eyes and empty pockets, thousands of inaugural revelers made the trek home on Wednesday, but few regretted their stay.
“The inauguration was the least relaxing vacation of my entire life,” said John Thomas, a California lawyer who got stuck outside of the ticketing gate on Tuesday but said he wouldn’t trade his overall experience for anything.
“You can usually say you need a vacation from a vacation, but after this one I truly feel the need to sleep for 24 hours — but it was still great,” Thomas said.
Charles Mininger bore the extra burden of chaperoning 26 Chicago high schoolers through the Mikva Challenge, a program designed to involve underserved students in the political process.
Despite nearly missing the swearing-in after waiting for hours in the cold, Mininger said his group is returning to the Windy City inspired and enthusiastic — though ready to catch some sleep on the plane.
“All of us had been working on campaigns for almost two years — this was the culmination,” Mininger said. “Feeling a part of the whole process in a small way aided in the effort to change public discourse.”
Jonathan Young, a D.C. lawyer who uses a walker due to a spinal cord injury, said the ceremonies were “ultimately a fabulous experience,” though acknowledged some reports of great difficulties for disabled attendees, like extremely limited means of transportation from Metro stops.
At Sunday’s opening concert at the Lincoln Memorial, Young said he “couldn’t go 10 or 15 feet without finding a volunteer” to assist him with where best to find handicapped-accessible areas, and a police officer personally guided him into the ticketed area for the swearing-in.
On Wednesday, he was “a little exhausted” from both attending the events and helping organize a Disability Power and Pride Ball Sunday night, but “exhilarated beyond measure.”
At Union Station, packed with people returning home by train, Cape Cod, Mass., residents Dennis and Kate Singletary said they had to watch the ceremony by Jumbotron “through a bunch of porta-potties” after the ticketing areas overflowed.
But it hardly soured them to the new administration: Next time, they said, the Obama team should organize all of the logistics.
Theodore Kahn contributed to this story.
