It's nice to see history from the crowd sometimes instead of on TV or from the press box. Obama's speech was a bit of an anticlimax. Not having timed it I would say it was 10 or 15 minutes. But it was in the low 20s, so people didn't exactly want him to launch a stemwinder, either. Plus he's saving stuff for Tuesday. The best thing about the day was the camaraderie on the streets, the good humor waiting hours in line, the hawkers hawking all kinds of Barack stuff, people trading Obama stories.

We got in line around 12:30 and were in War Memorial Plaza by 2. The police and volunteers did a great job with crowd control, and the crowd did a great job of behaving. The line headed west on Baltimore Street, with a huge loop up Calvert and back, then heading south on St. Paul, where we joined it, to points unknown. Saw a few people try to cut in line; they were politely told what the story was, and they went to the back. The family in front of us -- five or six folks, including a little girl of 9 or so and an older aunt from New Jersey -- were doing the full Obama. They waited four hours to see him today in Baltimore. Then on Tuesday they're getting up early to take a 7 a.m. MARC train to the National Mall, where they have standing-room tickets to see the inaugural oath. They have MARC reservations to come back to Baltimore, where they'll change into evening wear and catch a limo back to the district for a round of balls.

The crowd seemed evenly split between blacks and whites, with a decent amount of Asians. We kept seeing people we knew from Howard County. The Morgan State University choir, which sang about a half hour before Obama appeared, was gorgeous. Some workout guru came out a couple times to get the crowd moving and warmed up. Obama was on time, which never would have happened if Bill Clinton had been the headliner. The guy was always two hours late. A recording of Ray Charles singing 'God Bless America' was the perfect exit music after the Obamas and the Bidens left the dais. The people selling hand-warmers did a land office business.