#inaug09 People are nice and happy

Despite the desperate economic situation and being in two wars, people here are happy and nice. That's what hope and change does to you, I guess.

Like yesterday, we were lost in Baltimore, trying to get to the Beltway, and not once but twice ordinary Baltimoreans (one white, one black) came to help us. Noticing our out of state plates and map in hand, one man wearing a tan construction jacket and driving an SUV honked his horn and said he could tell we needed directions. And we got to where we needed to go. Thanks guys!

Even in the massive line-up for the Lincoln Memorial We Are One concert people were so nice and patient (except for the immature privileged-looking youngsters who tried to jump the line but they got their just desserts from the vigilant Obama volunteers).

Let's hope when there are a few million of us together on Tuesday the same happy and niceness will be there.

#inaug09 #dctrip09 Ohio to Baltimore

It's cold in Yellow Springs, Ohio. But not as cold as it was when we left Chicago. Yellow Springs is a self-described small town, liberal bastion near Dayton, Ohio. It is famously known as the home of Antioch College, a liberal arts college founded in the 1860s, whose famous alumni include Coretta Scott King, Steven Gould and Rod Steiger.

We'll be driving with teenagers to Baltimore, Md. It will take about eight hours. There we'll stay with Baltimore's famous Wheeler family who opened their wonderful home to us.

Looked on Twitter and saw lots of posts of people getting to D.C. or going to D.C. I'm hoping to get to the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow a.m. for the mega-concert and invocation by Eugene Robinson. Once my 13-year-old heard Josh Groban was performing she was ready to wait 10 hours in the cold.

This is perhaps one of the wildest things our family has done.