1.18- Obama-palooza

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Lincoln Memorial, Wash., DC, after today's "We Are One" concert kicked of the official Obama Inaugural festivities

Hello, all... On the road for a few days, off to DC for the Obamauguration! My brother and I missed the big concert, but walked the full length of the Mall people watching and picture-taking. (I am using a borrowed camera, and don't have access to my usual editing software, so the blog layout will be a bit off for the next few days.)

We actually walked a total of about 10 miles today, starting out in upper NW Washington, walking down Connecticut Avenue, through Kalorama and Foggy Bottom to the Lincoln Memorial... followed by walking the full length of the Mall to Capitol Hill and up the hill to the "Tune Inn" bar on Pennsylvania Ave. for some much needed thirst quenching beverages.

Along the way, we saw a lot of busses lined up in front of the State Department, just North of the Lincoln Memorial (I also took a picture of the State Department, just out of the shot below on the left, but a guard made me delete all three pictures I took!!! Really! He first threatened to confiscate the camera, but allowed me to delete the pics instead, watching my every step in displaying and deleting the pics on the digicam screne... Apparently, "The Man" is still large and in charge of things around here, preventing photos of public buildings... reminds me of when I visited East Berlin in 1979 and our busload of visitors was strictly admonished to take no photos of buildings with the "DDR" government symbol on them):

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Busses lined up near the Lincoln Memorial...
The Non-Photographable State Dept. is just out of the
shot on the left

And we saw a lot of National Guard waiting for their own busses to take them back to Maryland after the concert:

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Also, hundreds of vendors, licensed and not-so-licensed, hawking their goods along the streets and Mall:

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Yep, it's one big Obama-party in DC. Well, I must run off to more Obamabrations (the bars are open until 4:00 am!)

Lots to do over the next few days, culminating in a celebratory GOP-Pinata-Bashing in Adams Morgan Tuesday night. (See story and related photo on Lori's DC Daily Photo site.)

More tomorrow.

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