In November, Aaron and I decided in November that we should take a cruise.  Then we proceeded to plan our trip in our traditional fashion, which is to say we didn’t plan our trip until Mid-December.  By that point the cruise was pretty much off the table since the original reason for the cruise was because it would be cheap and easy no longer applied.

So somehow we ended up deciding on the Bahamas.  Now I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t know anything about the Bahamas except that it was someplace south, warm, and a lot of cruise ships stopped there.  But after DC’s mighty snowstorm and the random snowstorm that showed up on Christmas Eve at my parent’s house in Dallas, I was ready for something warm.  Additionally, like many people, I find that New Year’s in the District of Columbia, or really any major city, can be more stress and annoyance than fun.  There’s competing parties, the instinct to party-hop means you end up having no fun at any parties, there are never any cab, its like the worst of what Catherine Andrew’s calls the “Something Better syndrome.”  Well not this year.

So we booked our trip (I used points, $89, totally worth it) and fast-forward to December 29th where I pulled my usual travel routine.  And by usual I mean Adam and Aaron’s Patented Recipe for Flying (well patent pending).  I had a 6am flight and I left DC at 4:15am.  Which seems like a lot of time except my flight was from Dulles was at 6:00am.  And this was also 1) an international flight and 2) at the height of the holiday season post underwear bomber.  As I got closer to Dulles, I kept looking at the clock and swearing.  My original plan to park in economy parking ($10 a day) was thrown out of the window in the interest of time, I was now arriving at 4:50am and couldn’t spare the time it would take to get there.  So it was daily parking for me ($17 a day, ugh) and if I was any later, I might have to go hourly ($37 a day, more than my plane ticket).  I arrived at daily parking, got stuck behind a shuttle bus, parked somewhere in garage 2 (that’s important for later, not I don’t recall or write down exactly where I parked) and sprinted out of the garage.  There were no parking shuttles in sight so I started jogging to the terminal.  I should note it was FREEZING cold (the sun had yet to come up) and I was wearing my large REI hiking backpack.  Thankfully a kind rental car shuttle pulled over and offered me a ride to the terminal.  It was now almost 5am and I needed to check my bag in the next 15 minutes to make the “must check bags 45 minutes before a flight leaves” rule.  The other woman on the rental car bus noticed the wild panicked traveling late look in my eyes (patent pending, BCC Consulting) and looked away.  We arrived at the American Airlines check-in and I leaped out only to find…an hour + wait to check bags.  This was not going to work, not even a little bit.  I ran outside to try and check my bag outside but the computer had crashed.  I was screwed.

Or was I?

In the long history of audacious travel moves, there’s one I had not used in a while.  It was mythical in its origins, a legend in most traveling circles.  I was going to pull the checked-bag to carry-on conversion.  I cut the line to a ticket machine (over the protests of a family), printed my boarding pass and sprinted to security.  Along the way, while running, I took out my contact solution and other items and tossed them in the trash can, cinched down the straps on the hiking backpack as tight as I could, and hoped no one would questions my ability to carry-on the bag.

The key was in clearing security.  Once I made it past security it wouldn’t matter if I was told at the gate that I couldn’t carry-on the bag and that I would have to gate-check it.  That had been the original goal.  Still given the bags size, it was an audacious plan.

I cleared security in record time for Dulles (it being 520am helped) and made my way onto the people mover and the plane.  The counter agent didn’t even blink as I hauled my backpack past.  I was clear, though having cut it too close even by my standards.  Next stop, Miami and then Nassau.

Part II: Renting a car in North Eleuthera and adventures on Harbour Island.

It was a moment of pure unadulterated joy.

I lost it as I watched a small child on his father’s shoulders chanting “POTUS! POTUS!” which is Secret Service codename for President of the United States. CNN’s used Microsoft’s photosynth software to create an amazing 3D interactive display of the inauguration called “The Moment” and this satellite photo of the mall shows and this satellite photo from GeoEye puts in perspective just how crowded the mall was.

Chris Hayes said simply (and in tribute to the earlier concert) “I Saw My People” and Ezra wrote of his second-row seat to history:

And on the Mall today, you could believe it. The press was seated directly before the podium — I had a second-row seat to history, you might say — and behind us stretched the long lawn. And all we could do was gape. It was a sea of people. Millions of people. A mass of moving, yelling, dancing, joyous humanity, filling every patch of green and surrounding the Washington Monument. The image richly recalled the iconic photographs of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. And the assembled politicians knew it. Up on the podium, you could see senators snapping pictures on their digital cameras, pointing at the crowd, shaking their heads in disbelief. They weren’t pretending to be blase about the scene. This was different. This was dramatic. It was a screaming, laughing, cheering rejoinder to those who would constrain the scale of Obama’s ambitions, or question his political assets.

Tuesday was a memory I’ll treasure all my life and a story I’ll tell for all of it too.

2) “This Land Is Your Land”

At the opening “We Are One” concert on Sunday, which featured an all-star line-up that included Bon-Jovi, U2, and Will.I.Am on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of an audience of 400,000. But the most amazing moment came not when Kal Penn or Jack Black spoke of famous inauguration speeches (which was just kind of weird) but when Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger took to the stage to lead the crowd, and the nation, in a rendition of “This Land is Your Land.” And the entire crowd, from the Washington Monument almost a mile away to Barack Obama in the front row, joined in singing.

In the basement of the Hay Adam’s hotel where I was, I watched as an entire crowd of strangers joined in singing “This Land is Your Land.” And as my boss introduced his young son to a better world.

As the insightful Chris Haye’s later wrote “I Saw My People“:

My first thought, as I took in the sight from the press stand [on inauguration], was that I wanted them all to stay.

I’d felt the same way on Sunday listening to 89-year-old Pete Seeger sing Woody Guthrie’s oft-omitted verses to “This Land Is Your Land” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “In the squares of the city,” he sang to the half-million who’d assembled, “by the shadow of the steeple, by the relief office–I saw my people.”

I saw my people. It’s been a long time since a lot of people in this country felt like their government saw them.

3) Barack Obama Thanks His Campaign Staff at the Staff Ball and Throws in A “Departed” Reference.

On Wednesday, after six days of excessive celebrating, Aaron and I somehow picked our suits off the floor, chugged some tussin, and dragged ourselves out of our apartment to the final inaugural ball of 2009, the Obama for America staff ball. Thankfully they were only serving beer and wine

Entering the staff ball to U2′s “The City of Blinding Lights”

Obama: “Look at you, you guys are kids! And maybe its because so many of you are so young or at least young at heart that you could imagine what had not been done before. You didn’t know any better when people said I couldn’t win!”

And then Obama dropped one of Mark Walhberg’s lines from “The Departed” when talking about David Plouffe! Beginning of the video clip below!

Our president is so much fucking cooler then anyone’s president.

4) The Beastie Boys play Sabotage and Dedicate it to George W. Bush “for the last time!”

On Monday night at the Rock the Vote concert the Beastie Boys dedicated their encore performance of “Sabotage” to “George W. Bush for the last time.” The moment proved too much, too emotional, for my unnamed roommate.

5) Watching Bush’s Helicopter Fly Overhead for the Last Time.

On our way out of what had been the Purple Tunnel of Doom heading towards Massachusetts Ave. we looked up to see George W. Bush’s Marine One (or now Executive One) helicopter pass over us for the last time.

I saw this photo on the AP photo wire of Bush looking out on DC as he departed…

And I couldn’t help but be reminded of this photo from Katrina.

6) Jay-Z sings “I got 99 problems but a Bush Ain’t One” leads a cheer of “na na na na hey hey goodbye” and replaces “HOVA” with “OBAMA”

At the staff ball on Wednesday night Jay-Z took to the stage and a few songs put up a photo of Bush and said “once again these opinions are mine and mine alone” and lead the crowd in “a nice goodbye.” See below:

And then he replaced “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one” with “I got 99 problems but a Bush ain’t one!”

This wasn’t Jay-Z’s first performance for the campaign, I still get moved by his “Obama’s Running so We All Can Fly” video from Obama For America:

7) Eye Street in Front of the White House after Obama had Arrived.

After the swearing-in I headed to the roof of the Hay Adams for a TechNet event where I was able to watch the parade enter the White House and Obama walk across the White House lawn for the first time.

After that I walked out of the Hay Adam’s I came out on Eye Street, which was filled with hundred, no thousands, of people across from the White House. The street was alive, teeming with joy and humanity.

And I was overwhelmed. The Kerry office had been only a few blocks from the White House and on the longest of night’s I would walk by the White House and remind myself why I was working so hard. And on Election Day in 2004 I had to be at the office at 4am but woke up a few minutes early so I could walk by the White House one final time. For months after the election I couldn’t bring myself to walk by it, to come to terms with the failure of what I had worked so hard for.

But on I Tuesday, as I stared at the mass of people just out, enjoying their capital and staring at the White House through the security fences and past the parade stands, I broke down tearing up and smiling. And all I could think about was that Obama was right, “There’s nothing we can’t do…”

As you can imagine, given the historic nature of this election, many of these videos were political in nature. The Obama video of BO in the rain in virginia a few days before the election remains my favorite video of the cycle. it was so good that our vols and FO’s in Pennsylvania were fired up and ready to go…to Virginia (whoops).

The best Obama ad came in January before Iowa with “One Voice” with the line “one voice can change a room, and if it can change a room, it can change a city, and if can change a city it can change a state, and if it can change a state it can change a nation, if it can change a nation it can change the world, lets go change the world!”

The best political ad of 2008 was easily Tom Udall’s “Humbled.” But if that was the best then John Cornyn’s “Big John” was simultaneously the worst and most hilarious.

Everyone knows about “Yes.We.Can” but parody “john.he.is” gave us my favorite “make it a hundred (years)” line about staying in Iraq, while the atlanta kids singing “you can vote however you like” is bi-partisan awesome, and “Swing ‘Em Home” mocking Bush giving up golf during the war is priceless. For real-life hilarity, Senator Norm Coleman’s spokesperson refusing to answer questions for five minutes about if someone improperly bought his boss a few suits is hypnotic in its epic flak failing.

The AFL-CIO’s treasurer Richard Trumka, who is white, speaking on Racism and Obama was one of the most powerful discussions on the subject and flew around the internet. But the most powerful discussion of race and politics came from the candidate himself, Barack Obama in his “More Perfect Union” speech. Steve Grove from YouTube told me in October that at 37 minutes long is the most watched video ever uploaded from a presidential campaign.

Moving away from politics, the video of Eric ‘The Eel’ Moussambani’s breaking the Equatorial Guinea record 100m freestyle swimming record was hilarious and everything that the olympics is supposed to be about. Speaking of sports, the Nike commercial of the 2008 USA men’s basketball team practicing set to Marvin Gay’s rendition of the national anthem helped restore my faith in USA men’s basketball (reclaiming the gold helped too). And to bring it back to politics again, Obama shooting hoops with the troops in Kuwait and sinking two three-pointers in a row is just sick.

Feist on Sesame Street makes me smile and “Where the Hell is Matt?” brought joy to many and the song “praan” is haunting and available for purchase off amazon.

The best video featuring me and the award-winning MyDD BTR crew was from the netroots nation pub trivia contest.

And of course, this was, the year of “we’ll do it live!” and the “rick roll.”