corilannam | Awesome rally! I can't wait to watch it on youtube

I almost didn't go to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I've been sick with a chest cold all week, was up coughing most of the night, and wasn't sure I was going to be up for standing out on the Mall for several hours. But in the end, the weather was warmer than expected, and for all the years I've lived in the DC area, I've never been to a rally, so I hauled my wheezing self out of bed and off to the rally.

We got to the Shady Grove Metro station and my eyes just about bugged out of my head when I saw a line of people coming out of the Metro station and trailing out past the parking garage and wrapping around the outer parking lots. The garage itself was oddly empty, so I don't know where all those people came from, but it was pretty obvious where they were going.

I immediately took a picture to send

stellarmeadow and

meeby to explain why we might be a little late.

Fortunately, the line was just to buy farecards. I kissed my SmarTrip pass as we sidled past the waiting throng. We got on the platform and saw that the line was coming from the other side of the station as well.

It took a while for the train to come. The Metro, as of course you'd expect, was doing track work today, leaving the Red Line kind of fucked. We crammed on, and the train got packed tighter and tighter as a few more people hurled themselves into the sardine can at each stop. "I think I'm legally engaged to at least six people," I commented somewhere around Farragut North.

"I have great health insurance!" the cute girl pressed against my left side instantly chirped. "I just wanted to get my bid in."

Alas, though her boyfriend seemed approving, we had to get off the train before we could discuss dowry terms.

We shuffled through the teeming throngs (honestly, I have lived here 16 years and I have never seen crowds like that, though admittedly I watched the Inauguration on TV). I realized it was going to be a rather interesting experience when we found Stellar and MB by using the shifting landmarks of the rally. "Okay, we're approaching Jefferson. Are you on the corner with the Hitler smiley faces?" "Yeah, we're between the Hitler smiley faces and the Elephant in the Room."

Then we shuffled into the entrance of the site itself. It was quickly clear that we were not going to get very far--nobody was. From 7th up to the Capitol, the Mall was completely packed. I swore never to complain about GA at Adam Lambert concerts again.

Despite everyone shoving up against each other and not being able to see the screens, let alone the stage, everyone was polite and good-humored. I amused myself looking at the various signs within eyeshot.

If I held my camera up over my head, you could kind of see down to where the action was.

We were separated from the Capitol only by several thousand of our closest friends!

As the rally got underway, we decided to exit the crush and see if we could hear better (and in my case, breathe better) over on the sidelines by the museums. We sold a little more of our souls to corporate America in exchange for McNuggets and quarterpounders, then worked our way up Jefferson in front of the Air and Space museum.

This was where we saw the march part of the march and rally. People walked up and down the street with signs and cameras while more people crowded on the curb, the sidewalks, the steps and walls of the museum, wherever they could find a spot to stand or sit.

When Jon and Stephen started talking, we couldn't hear much (acoustics on the Mall are such that you have to find the perfect spot against a building for the sound to reverberate on--which we found up at the entrance to A&S about 20 minutes before the rally ended) and we couldn't see anything at all.

Others were more ambitious and climbed up into the trees, onto the roofs of the port-a-potties, onto the roofs of trucks and dumpsters on the street. Park police tried to chase them down, but eventually gave up. I am a bit ungainly for climbing up onto the roofs of anything, so I settled for a spot on the curb next to the guy dressed as Nacho Libre (yes, it was that kind of crowd).

So I mostly people-watched and took pictures of the signs. Some were clever, some were inane. Some had a political agenda, others had a...different sort of agenda. Some were moving, some were offensive. Some were just completely random. But everyone brought their point of view and expressed it peaceably. Although the crowd was definitely dominated by young white liberals, I saw a great number of people of all ages, ethnicities, religions, abilities, and political beliefs.

So here's the rest of it, without further commentary from me (except to ask you to forgive my crappy photography skills!)

Once the rally ended, the crowd cleared out in an orderly fashion, leaving the Mall relatively unscathed, as you see in the final photo. We headed up to Elephant & Castle to finish celebrating

chelseafrew's birthday, then finally home on a slightly less crowded Metro.

My lungs and feet are definitely paying the price now, but it was worth going. I forgot to TiVo the broadcast, so I'm just hoping it shows up online somewhere so I can, you know, see what actually happened.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to stop coughing long enough to watch Merlin before bed!