Inauguration Adventures (7 months late)

So TT is in town visiting and of course all of New York wants to act up. We walk into the subway and there is this dude laid out across several seats like this is his bedroom. To make it worse he has his shoes off neatly tucked under the seats. I just wonder what goes through people’s minds. Like do you really care that little about the fact that you’re inconveniencing anyone who would like to sit down? Now if I woke you up and asked you to scoot the heck over I bet you’d be utterly disgusted at me for disturbing your sleep. I just don’t know about people.

So we are off to DC for Inauguration and I am super excited about it. It should be fun. Even though we have no transportation, am unsure of where we will be sleeping we have nothing to fear. We have TT’s interactive map. Its color coded with a clear visual of the most comfy benches to sleep on. What she failed to mention is that she booked us on a China bus to get there. These are like low end modes of transportation. The bus drivers speak no English, your seat isn’t guaranteed and there are absolutely no amenities. I can’t be mad at her. She didn’t know.
At 7am we are on this bus still wiping boogers out of our eyes when a drunk Rastafarian whose locks smell decides to sit right behind us. Well maybe they didn’t smell but he certainly did. I mean who is drunk at 7am? I know who…an alcoholic. You don’t need to be going to Inauguration. You need to be in an AA meeting admitting that you have a problem. The worse part about people who get drunk is that alcohol on the breath stinks and when you fall asleep you snore like crazy. This man was guilty of both. You ever have those moments where you just want to lash out and punch someone in the face? That’s what I wanted to do. There are certain things that drive me nuts. The sound of Styrofoam, someone snoring and when people scratch their throat and they sound like a frog.

He snored his way through our first stop in New Jersey where people going to Philly got off. The bus driver makes an announcement, people exit and we continue on our journey. Maybe 30 minutes later this dude wakes up and realizes he isn’t in Kansas anymore. You see he was supposed to get off in Jersey. We are in like Delaware at this point.

So estupido village idiot decides it’s a smart idea to threaten and yell at the Chinese bus driver who can’t speak English and doesn’t even realize he is being insulted. He begins to demand that the bus driver pulls over immediately and let him off. That’s smart. Drop him off in the middle of nowhere and he’ll figure out how to get home. He gets the bus driver so upset that he eventually pulls over. So now he has inconvenienced the whole bus because he decided to drown his woes about his daddy leaving him at four in a bottle of whiskey. Hey guy, my dad left too but you don’t see me acting all wacky…most days. Eventually some other men go outside because he is in the bus driver’s face, they call another bus and that bus takes him to wherever he needs to go. This has already shaped up to be an interesting trip.

That’s the story of the guy sitting behind us. This doesn’t include the guy eating gross smelling food to my left or the overly friendly guy in front of us. I was nice to him because I wanted to read his newspaper. He was an older Indian guy (from India not Native American) and he seemed harmless. Too bad he decided that he wanted to hang out with us and be our tour guide once we arrived in DC. What were we supposed to do? We couldn’t say scram. We did what any mature adults would do. When we got in the subway station filled with a bazillion people we ran the other direction when he wasn’t looking hoping he didn’t see us.

It’s just amazing to even have the opportunity to be here. I wasn’t alive for the civil rights movement or the march on Washington, but I’m here for this. I’m excited that when I’m 80 I will be able to tell my grandkids I watched the first Black president be inaugurated on a jumbo screen in DC. Ha ha.

But the first order of business is to…attend a house party. It wasn’t really a party. It was a whole bunch of people chilling in the house playing cards, watching the game and laughing. One guy in particular caught my fancy. Not romantically but his persona was funny. He looked straight up white but sounded and acted like what some would characterize as black. That wasn’t even the funny part. It just added to the humor. He had this I’m so mysterious and different you can’t figure me out and that makes me eclectic and special in some sort of way persona he was attempting to exude. No. That makes you a black guy (turns out he was black) who looks white who uses that along with other things to define you as different and therefore a more rare breed. Who cares?

A few of us went to eat and of course I got sleepy. So I fell asleep on the couch. Some tried to make fun of me for that but I am known for falling asleep anywhere. When I’m tired it’s a wrap. I’ve fallen asleep at several live concerts, Denny’s, in the club, etc. That doesn’t matter. The most important thing is whether or not my mouth was open when I was sleep.