I spent the night at my friend's near the cathedral after a 4 am jaunt for korean bbq. She has a disability, so had a handicap parking decal. Around 11:15, we left her place and drove down towards the courthouse where she knew there was some handicap parking spots - but around 6th & H there was parking at a meter - there were other spots at meters available as we walked down...

The handicap accessible area was at 4th & Madison - so we went towards that area where there was a throng of people pressing... The shuttle for the disabled would come up to that corner and basically noone would let the wheelchair people through without someone having a screaming fit at everyone. So we had to push up to get to the disability entrance basically being fairly well smashed - in the front, there was a guy that my friend asked if he would get the sheriffs attention so we could go through the gate, the guy basically refused and was really really rude about it. Eventually we managed to get the sheriff's attention on our own and get around obstructionist guy.

So we basically got there maybe 10 mins after 12, which really wasn't all that bad. My friends from florida had gotten up to the mall at 8 am and had a spot at the front next to the sound van, but there was no way we were going to get up there to join them without doing a lot of pushing and shoving and it was nice in the disability area, lots of great energy, old ladies in wheel chairs dressed up and waving signs who would get up to dance in the street - lots of the wheelchair people would start twirling in circles or hold hands dancing in their wheel chairs.

Once we got into the mall area, there was so much going on that the cell phones didn't work for the next 4 hours, everything was overwhelmed. The bf & his parents had tried to get on the metro at Glenmont, but there was a mile and a half line out the door - so they went over to one of the other stations that wasn't so bad. So they got to the mall area around 1:30 and really couldn't get close enough to see anything. When we were getting dinner afterwards, some guy had said that part of the problem with the metro was people were getting on in the inner stations and taking the trains out of town to the end station and riding the train back into town - so the trains were arriving at the end of the line already mostly full...

THe stage was set pretty low, so while we could see the stage, we couldn't see who was on it - we also sat on the ground so we weren't blocking the view of people in wheelchairs around us.

I went to the porta potties at some point and was shocked to see how many people had climbed up on the row of portapotties to get a better view - and how many people had climbed up in trees. the bf said that a woman was on a porta potty near him and a police officer kept telling her to get down sayng that one of the porta potties had collapsed and a woman got hurt - we did see them using a motorized cart to pull a strapped down woman on oxygen out... I'm not sure if she was the same one that fell off a porta potty.

So we actually had a relatively easy time of it - I did have to cajole my friend to get her moving in the morning and make her a couple cups of coffee because she has difficulty getting moving - we'd planned to leave earlier than we did.

It didn't end up as cold as I thought it would be - I'd loaned my friend my icebreaker sweater which I nearly had to peel off her to get back afterwards (I guess I know what I should get her for christmas)