Kathleen's Big Adventure

Sometime before Christmas, our daughter Sarah and her husband, Vainateya Deshpande (Desh), who live in Washington, D.C., invited my wife Kathleen to visit during Inauguration Week. She left on the train from Elkhart Friday, January 16, in below-zero temperature. It was still pretty cold on Sunday, when the three of them visited Monticello. Here she is at a frozen birdbath outside the house. But to me, she seems a dark-haired Galadriel at her magic mirror.

Kathleen says that the underground part of the house extends beyond the limits of the house itself. Here are Kathleen and Sarah admiring Jefferson's house. Desh is saddled with the Curse of the Photographer. He took all the pictures, so he doesn't appear in any of them.

On Monday they went to the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, in Chantilly, Virginia. It's big enough to hold the Space Shuttle Enterprise, an Air France Concorde, the B-29 Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb), and hundreds of other complete aircraft. Desh got a picture of Sarah and Kathleen in front of a P-47 Thunderbolt, the type of plane my father flew in World War II.

Tuesday, January 20 was the big day. The original plan was to join a friend of Sarah and Desh who was a staffer for Senator Edward Kennedy and observe the inauguration from the balcony of Kennedy's office. Somehow that plan fell through. But since the Senate office buildings are on the other side of the Capitol, there might not have been a lot to observe. Instead, they went to the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, where they could see the procession from the White House to the Capitol and the Inaugural Parade. And they could watch the ceremony on a JumboTron. The Washington D. C. Transit system worked well for them. They took the bus from Sarah and Desh's apartment and arrived without a problem. The problems

began after they got to downtown Washington, where they had to

deal with long lines for security checks. The two hours of waiting did give Desh an opportunity to show the crowd and some of the individuals in it. One of the youngest participants in the festivities charmed everyone who saw her. While most of the people waiting to see the inauguration were focusing on Barack Obama, quite a few

were more than happy to see the departure of George W. Bush from the Executive Mansion. It's been eight very long years.

CNN was broadcasting from the Newseum. From her vantage point, Kathleen saw Cokie Roberts, Campbell Brown (who was noticeably pregnant), and George Will. Even though the people in the Newseum were inside, people kept their coats on. Still, it was a lot more comfortable than being out on the Mall in the 20-degree weather. And if they couldn't see the Inauguration directly, the JumboTron provided a larger-than-life view.

After the inauguration came the parade, with the wedge of police motorcycles bringing up the front. You can see beginning of a long line of portable toilets on the other side of the street. Somehow the crowds weren't that big on that side of the Avenue. I'm not sure the port-a-potties served their purpose.Then came the motorcade--the security and media vehicles and the President's (that's President Obama!) limousine--a stretch Cadillac Escalade--followed by more limousines and and security vehicles. Kathleen saw Sasha's pink mitten in the window. The parade, which went on for hours, included this 1950s-era Washington, D.C. transit bus, which garnered a lot of applause. I once drove a bus very much like this one when I was a student at the University of Iowa and drove the Cambus in a loop around the campus. There were a couple of 1953-vintage buses that were eventually replaced by modern 1956-models. This was in the early 1970s. There were a lot of bands, many from historically black colleges.

The Illinois float, with its John Deere tractor and image of Lincoln, was a highlight of the parade.

With the parade over, it was time to head back to Sarah and Desh's apartment, though not before eating an exorbitantly-priced meal at the Newseum cafeteria ($5 for a Coke, $9 for a personal pizza). Both Kathleen and Sarah came down with colds after their adventure, but it was surely worth it. I doubt whether there will be another inauguration like it in their lifetimes.