Posted by
Jackpine Savage on Saturday, September 12, 2009 10:52:47 PM
Greetings from a hotel room in Sterling VA.
I'm sitting here on the bed, with a serious case of Barking dogs.
I guess that's what happens when you're an old crippled guy who stands on the lawn of the Capitol Building for 5 straight hours.
I can sum up the entire experience with three simple letters
OMG!!!!!
A couple days ago, I made what I thought to be a generous estimate of 500,000 patriots descending on DC.
Boy was I OFF!!
I've seen crowd estimates today from a Laughable 60,000, to 2 million.
I'm no expert on guaging crowd size, but the "mob" stretched from the Capitol Steps, to the Washington Monument!
I would venture a wild guess and say at Least 1.5 Million patriots from Every state and even Puerto Rico.
At least, they told me they were here from PR, and I can't think of any reason they would lie.
(They weren't liberals, anyhow)
I knew the crowd was going to be enormous long before we even got into the city.
Last night you could feel something in the air, almost like the tension you feel in the air before a huge storm hits.
I knew we were in for a historic moment.
This morning, since we planned to meet a bunch of Fellow TH bloggers, we tried to leave early.
When we arrived at the vienna VA Metro station, the line to buy tickets already spilled out of the terminal, onto the sidewalk, and down the road. Two hours later, we finally boarded a train so Packed (At the 1st station in the line) that they almost needed shoe-horns to get everyone in. It reminded me of the scenes you sometimes see of the subway in Tokyo where they hire people to shove passengers into cars. You didn't have to wory about falling over, there was no place to fall.
That was the first shock of the day.
Then we came streaming out of the Federal Triangle station in what looked like a human river, to witness Pennsylvania alive with a sea of humanity, all heading toward the capital building.
We had planned to meet up with the other TH'ers at the washington monument, between 9-10, Unfortunately, that never happened because it was almost Noon before we got off the train.
I was able to Hook up with Mrs Paddy, and JefffotF(and his lovely wife), because we'd traded phone numbers ahead of time.
(Later We were able to hook up with CKHustler too, at the old post office bldg.)For the folks we never could find, my apologies, but No on expected the turnout we saw. I was nearly noon when we came out of the station, and the crowd-creature swallowed us up and took us to the capitol bldg.
We started working our way as close to the middle of the "mosh pit" as we could get. We wanted to be elbow to elbow with Real Americans, and trust me We Were! I think it will take a week or more to get the smile off Mrs Paddy's face.
The signs, and T-shirts and other amazingly creative ways people showed their love for america, simply Blew me away.Any idiot that tries to call this astroturf has to be bass ackward, because there wasn't a single sign there that someone hadn't slaved over.
I'm too worn out tonight to really do it justice, plus I plan to talk about our experience friday at the flight 93 memorial, so I'll be doing a full post monday.
But I promised I'd blog tonight if I was still conscious, and I am, well somewhat anyhow.
Unlike Michell Obama, I've Always been proud of my country, but I have never been as PROUD of my Fellow Americans as I am today.
This is the day the Silent Majority found it's voice
America, you did yourself Proud today. :o)
For those of you who couldn't make it, here's a video I just found with a few highlights. :o)
OK, I"m going to bed, now, I'll go into more detail monday.