Or, simply put, now that I find out this week I am getting tickets to the inauguration from my congressman, months after hotel rooms have been sold out, I'm supposed to do what?
This is my first diary, so please bear with me but I wanted to share my experiences with the community. I expect many other people who wish to attend this historic event will find themselves in similar situations. Maybe my solution can work for them, too.
My 14 year old daughter, who is even more liberal than I, much to her Dad's dismay, thought it would be "really awesome" if we could attend the inauguration. I explained to her that our chances were slim to none of getting tickets, but that I would try.
I requested tickets from my two senators and my congressman and then waited. Schummer held a raffle for tickets and, according to the news, only 26 people from LI won. As I had herard nothing from his office, I concluded I wasnt one of them.
Clinton's office did not even acknolwedge my request for tickets and I have no idea how and when she was giving them out. This is typical of my dealings with Clinton's office.
Congressman Bishop, who was the Provost of Southampton College when I attended there(Damn, I forgot to mention I was an alum when I submitted my request) was taking requests for tickets via email and so I figured, why not? Again, I had heard nothing, so I broke the news to my daughter this week at dinner.
Wednesday I got an email that I almost deleted. There was no subject line and just the person's name. I figured it was a Nigerian scam but as it was a slow day in the office, I read it anyway. "Hundreds of thousands of people requested tickets...blah blah blah,,,,you have been chosen to recieve 2 trickets" I almost fell out of my chair. I never win anything,raffles, contests, boobyprizes,...nada. This time, however, it seems I grabbed the brass ring.
I had been hearing stories for weeks now about how there where no hotel rooms in DC and that people where renting out homes,apartments, and even couches for outrageous prices. So, now that I had tickets this late in the game, just how was an average person like me supposed to get there and how much was it going to cost?
I did a quick search and many sites suggested the best place for info was the DC tourism site linked to the official inauguration page. They supposedly had the mnost current info on what hotels were available and for how much. I called and spoke to Stan, who it seemed was not used to speaking to cheap NYer's like me.
First, Stan said the list they had had not been updated for a week(so much for "the google") but that the cheapest hotels in DC started at $500 a night. I said to Stan " Are you insane?" Stan replied " Excuse me?" with a distinct tone of disapproval. I said again "Are you insane? Who can afford $500/nt for a hotel?" Stan was clearly not used to dealing with people with a user name of Priceline Queen. He seemed quite annoyed that I would find $500 a night for a hotel outrageous. It's his reply that really ticked me off.
"Well, Madam, if it's really important to you that you be here for the inauguration,than that's what you will have to pay." How dare he intimate that because I refuse to pay $500 a night, even if I could afford it,that attending the inauguration wasn't really important to me! He then went on to say that if I wanted to "take the risk " of staying outside of DC, the hotels were only $300/nt.
My plan actually had been to do just that: stay at a hotel outside of DC and take the Metro in. Well, according to Stan, they expected the millions of other peasants like me who couldnt afford $500 a night to do the same thing. He implied the ill mannered lower class people coming in to DC on the Metro to see the inauguration were expected to shut the entire Mewtro system down. It was feared that the unmannered masses taking the Metro would try to squeeze in too many people at a time and the doors wouldn't be able to close and that this would throw the entire metro offline. Oh, and did I still want to "take the risk" of staying out of town? After a few more" well, if it was really important to you, you would pay, I let stan go to help someone richer than myself.
But Stan had succeed in some ways. Would the Metro really shut down? What would happen if it did? Would my daughter and I be stuck listening to the swearing in on our car radio from a Metro parking lot?
Then I remembered Keith Olbermann taling about taking Amtraks' Acela train from NY to DC. I figured at this late date it would be sold out but it was worth checking out. Indeed, the Acela was sold out( so much for running into Keith and getting him to sign his book that my daughter got me for Christmas) but there were other trains still available that would get us there in time and the trains get you right to the heart of DC. Who needs the metro!
It's going to be quite the slog to get from eastern LI to DC by train and back in one day on Amtrak and the $375 for both of us is way more than I wanted to spend but still cheaper than the bargian Stan claimed to be offering me.
My daughter is just thrilled to be going with me. She even promised that she will not whine about how bored she is on the train. As she said, "This is history, Mom". It is indeed.
A final thought. Remember how Senators were so outraged that people were going to scalp tickets to the inauguration? It would mean that "the average citizen" would not be able to get aticket to the inauguration. Well, senators, if you are so concerned about average people being able to attend the inauguration, how about stopping the price gauging by hotels for rooms, huh?