A Great Day in our Nation's Capital

Rosie, Melanie and I went to Washington yesterday to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity.  It was a wonderful experience.  We heard little or nothing of what went on at the rally, but just being there was a lot of fun.  We joined about a quarter of a million of our fellow citizens before the Capitol building where it all went on.  The real story for us was the transportation.  Lynn Cullen, a Pittsburgh radio personality arranged for a series of buses to get us to DC.  We arrived in Rosalyn, Virginia where we were to take the Metro into DC for the rally.  The problem was that all of the trains were crammed full of people.  They looked like sardine cans.  We finally arranged for a car to take us into the rally.  We got there and walked around watching the people, seeing the signs and listening to the crowd.  It was fascinating.  The signs were full of humor, the crowd was alive and excited.  The costumes were a joy.  I bought some souvenirs for far too much money and we walked around the rally for a while.  Eventually we decided to go back to where the bus would meet us.  We went to the L'Enfant plaza station to get the Metro.  We started to go down the escalator to the tracks, but all of a sudden something happened.  There were screams and the crowd started to surge backward.  We quickly left the building and tried to find out what happened.  Later we discovered that the escalator began to moved very rapidly, tumbling the passengers into one another at the bottom.  Four persons were injured, none seriously.  We saw the fire, police and Metro security people quickly arrive at the station.  We got a taxi and got back to Virginia.  We got some refreshments and met Melanie's friends Hope and Terry Alcorn.  We visited for a while until our bus came to pick us up.  We left Virginia about 5:00 and got back home at midnight.  It was a good day simply to be present at the thing and to watch all that went on.