Inauguration Adventures

Below includes videos, because everyone wants those!

Getting there

I made it to DC twelve hours later than I intended, but there were many moments when I wondered if I would make it at all, so I was grateful when I got there. The ordeal was so ridiculous it's worth describing (if you want to skip ahead that's okay, too).

I booked my flight with Northwest Airlines. Was supposed to leave Seattle about 12:45 on Friday. That flight was delayed nearly three hours because incoming craft was late. Meaning I would miss my connection in Detroit. I asked if there was another flight to either DC airport from Seattle that I could catch. Yes! They booked me on Delta, from Seattle through Atlanta to DC (are you still following?). I arrive at the airport and try to check in... to no avail. I find out the flight is delayed 40 minutes I have to go to the ticket counter where, after waiting in line for nearly an hour and a half, find out that not only will I not make my connection but that the flight was overbooked from the start and I didn't have a seat on it. The lady at the ticket counter was just as frustrated as me and had a very unpleasant exchange with someone from Northwest on the phone when she realized that they had not actually released my original ticket and I was living in ticket limbo, unable to get a boarding pass from either agency (merger shmerger). She suddenly disappeared and returned many minutes later declaring there was no way I could get to DC that day.

So after much deliberation and another futile attempt at talking to NWA (they had washed their hands of me as I was now officially Delta's problem) I was booked the following morning from Atlanta, no seat assignment. And they couldn't accommodate me as this last delay was due to weather. Ironically, my first delay was an equipment delay and is what landed me there in the first place.

So around 1:30 pm, a good 24 hours since I had last slept, medicated with sudafed, afrin, tessalon perles (for my URI), and a small handful of ibuprofen (for the root canal I needed last week), I left Seattle for Atlanta. I slept maybe an hour on the plane.

My luck turned around as my sister had coincidentally just moved to Atlanta last week! I got a quick visit with her, a few hours sleep and was back at the airport 2 hours early to get my seat.

Successfully, I traversed the last leg and arrived to the welcoming home of my cousin's house with his fabulous wife and two criminally adorable children, ages 2 and 4 years old. They serenaded me with renditions of happy birthday, she's coming around the mountain and the like. I enjoyed a night out with the grownups and the following morning rehearsals began.

Rehearsals

I met up with my friend from the Seattle contingent at the hotel and took the Metro to our rehearsal site, St. Elizabeth's Hospital. The grounds were enormous and served as a perfect place to gather nearly 200 musicians to march around for hours on end. Interestingly, I believe the facility is a forensic psychiatric center and we were thankful that the DSMIV didn't include us anymore. We performed for the residents at St. Elizabeth's our last day there.

The following days were both awesome and arduous. We sounded terrible to start with and we couldn't turn corners in formation. It was blistering cold weather and I don't know about the other musicians but I was starting to remember anatomy class as I began to ache in muscles I forgot I had. At first we were a bit hard to organize. Quoting Lisa, one of our fearless leaders: "How many of you have cats? How many of you have ever tried to get your cat to do anything? Now picture your house with 180 cats. Now picture it with 180 gay musician cats."

We worked our tails off. Between the two days we played standing still, working on the music. We marched around the grounds more than 12 hours, horns held high, turning left, right, left again. We played through each piece countless times. Two camera crews chronicled our practices, a documentary project from NBC (click here to see if it's airing in your area) and a crew from the CBS affiliate network LOGO. We played and marched all day Monday, mostly in our uniforms, which resembled French rolls of duct tape with the puffy silver jackets and blue berets but kept me suitably warm. The only real hitch was the lack of coffee the second day. Those of us from Seattle, and those with incurable coffee addictions were holding coffee cups with our cream and/or sugar, hovering around a percolator trying not to snap.

The Real Thing

Exhausted from the switch from nights to days, the 3 hour time change, the two days of travel to get there and the two days of intense practice, my Seattle bandmate and I woke at 5 am to start our day of making history.

We took the Metro a couple stops to our meeting place in a large mall where at 7 a huge breakfast buffet was served and we received our credentials from the Secret Service. We were also again reminded that while on the parade route there would be no reaching in our pockets, stopping or deviating from our marching. I quote a DC police officer who spoke to us at rehearsal: "You're allowed to breathe, you're allowed to blow into the instrument or hit it, but don't do anything else or you'll get shot." The trombonists joked, but may have been genuinely concerned, that emptying their spit valves may result in bodily harm.

Journey to the Start Point

By 9 am we were loaded onto our 4 buses to head to the Pentagon for security clearance. We roasted in our umpteen layers and uniforms, listening to the inauguration coverage on the bus radio until about half way through President Obama's speech when we finally unloaded our sauna and were searched, scanned and fed a boxed lunch (yes, there was a vegetarian option. Go Pentagon!) We then proceeded back to our freshly screened buses newly frozen. We then waited again for a number of hours, roasting and antsy.

Finally we made it to the staging area near the White House where we were directed into warming tents for a period of time until we lined up outside for another hour or so before we were shuffled back into the tents to defrost again. The entire time from before our Pentagon screening through our march we were accompanied by military escort. They were responsible for giving us orders we were instructed to follow to the letter. (Photo from my cell phone as we first lined up - note the Washington Memorial in the background).

Before us was the Howard University Band and its sashaying dance squad (the Pennsylvania float would join us later) and behind us were the Mobile Alabama Azalea Trail Maids, fluffy petticoat-ed southern bells who were a total joy to look at. I took a picture of them with my cell phone as we hustled into the warming tents for a last warm up before the march (see right). Finally we lined up for the last time just after sunset, about 10 hours after our credentialing at breakfast that morning. We marched forward in the dark, the real thing upon us!

Down Pennsylvania Avenue

The first bit was so dark I couldn't read my music! Thankfully we had practiced enough that I didn't really need to. I also lost feeling in my right fingers (exposed so I could play) and my face (lips kind of necessary to play trumpet). But as we moved forward, the lighting got better and I actually began to sweat from the effort of marching.

It's hard to describe what it felt like to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, celebrating the inauguration of our freely elected 44th President, the first minority President, the first President to EVER publicly include gays and lesbians in his speeches and his parade, the first man who believes civil rights extend to all citizens, not just some. I wasn't marching to entertain anyone, I didn't care if we played cool music or looked like French duct tape rolls playing in the dark, I was marching to show all gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer people all over the world that in America we matter. We are part of this country and our President recognizes us as equal citizens.

We got a standing ovation from the mayor's viewing stand. We got cheers and jeers (mostly cheers) for freezing bystanders, and police, military and secret service cheered for us loudly! Some of the crowds screamed so hard for us I would start to tear up. When we turned the corner to approach the President's grandstand we had to stop playing and marched to the click of drumsticks. This was so bands wouldn't play over each other. As we faced the grandstand, listening to the rusty-voiced announcer (who had us in stitches with his grunting and throat-clearing between announcements) announce the band in front of us I tried to just soak up the moment. (You can see me in the pic on left!)

The light at the grandstand was blindingly bright. It shone through my crystal blue mouthpiece and I could see the heads in front of me held high. Then it was our chance to march under the camera cranes and into the light. The cadence started us off and we marched into history. I had Washington Post memorized pretty well and looked out of the corner of my eyes as we marched to see President Obama and his wife with a huge smile waving and, I swear, looking right at me! My heart swelled so full I couldn't play for a couple of measures, the lump on my throat made it impossible. Then, after we passed the grandstand, when I thought the moment was over, the largest crowd yet was there to cheer for us as we wailed through what I felt was our signature piece, Brand New Day.

By 7 or so, twelve hours from our AM meet-up, we were back in our buses to head back to Arlington, where we started from.

Homecoming

Not 12 hours after marching in front of President Obama back on all of 4 hours sleep, I was 30,000 miles in the sky on my way back to Seattle. Another 18 hour day - starting on one coast and finishing with my continuity clinic on the other. Making it through clinic sleep deprived, running on fumes and the left over adrenalin from the day before, I was in bed by 6:30 PM after clinic, dreaming our repertoire, Washington Post, Brand New Day, Manhattan Beach, Hold On I'm Coming and Ode to Joy over and over again...


Decompressing

I found out at our post inauguration dinner that three of four of our baton twirlers had left before the parade for personal reasons. This left one man as the sole baton twirler, leading us forward. When I see footage of us marching and the pure joy and pride in his face and step I am so happy he was there to show the joy we all felt but could only express through our music! Watching him raise his arms in the air with suge a HUGE smile makes me smile every time I see it!

I also was reminded of a story our drum major told us during the credentialing breakfast. He was at a required meeting the day before. After this meeting a number of military personnel went out of their way to come up to him and another LGBA leader to shake their hands and wish them luck and thanks. The sheer number of people to do so, and the intensity with which they did, made him realize that these people were saying with their handshakes what they couldn't say in the open, being military personnel, giving our marching all that much more meaning.

I'm so honored to have been a part of something so important and so meaningful. I could have told so many more stories in here - how many times I had to pee before we set off, 2 AM string cheese raids, the man on the Metro with the photo of the rainbow flag in space, laughing at the way Rick Warren said "Sasha" and singing our music in the buses, I will just leave it at this and hope that one day the gay presence at presidential and national events will no longer mean either a media blackout (did you all know a gay bishop and gay chorus were also a part of the weekend? Probably not) or special coverage, and just be another group of equal Americans partaking in the celebration.