I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... Message Board

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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend....

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To: Sully- who wrote (35168)	9/2/2010 6:29:37 AM
From: Sully-	of 35834

Here's one story regarding the Restoring Honor rally I haven't seen or read online yet. One you've read this & added it to the photos & other stories you've heard, there is little doubt this rally had serious numbers of people who attended, quite possibly unprecedented numbers for this type of event. Dave & I anticipated that 250,000 people would attend; 350,000 at most. Our plan was to arrive at the Shady Grove Metro station before they opened Saturday morning @ 7:00 AM. Shady Grove is on the end of the Red Line. Our thinking was the odds favored us getting an empty or near empty train & we'd make it to the Lincoln Memorial long before the rally began @ 10:00 AM. I've taken this train many dozens of times in the past. It normally takes about 40-45 minutes during peak hours to go from Shady Grove to the Smithsonian stop [which includes one transfer at the Metro Center station]. So we felt we had built in plenty of cushion for unexpected delays. WRONG! It was 6:50 AM when we parked at Shady Grove Park & Ride. We were in Lot 1. There are two lots at this station. There was a huge line of people already formed. I'd guess it was a couple thousand people in that line. We quickly surmised the line was people who had to purchase a Metro ticket before boarding, so we took our place in line MEMO: Buy your ticket ahead of time!]. It's hard to tell how many folks arrived with Metro tickets in hand as thousands of folks walked past us, but a lot of them came back to get in our queue. As time passed the line grew dramatically, yet we only creped forward slowly. It took about an hour to move about 100 yards [we were queued up 6-8 abreast]. By then the line had grown to many thousands of people. Some folks went to the upper floors of the parking lot to take pictures of the lines. A security guard & Metro employee we talked to while in line confirmed what several locals had already said; they had never seen so many people line up like this at any Metro stop before. At about 8:30 AM, we finally made it almost to the entrance into the station. It took us another 15 minutes or so to queue up in the lines to buy tickets. I waited by the booth where the turnstiles are while Dave stood in line to get tickets. That's when I noticed that people from Lot 2 were entering the station form the other side. We later learned that line also had many, many thousands of people queued up there as well. While we were separated the Metro staff opened the gates & announced that there was an empty train on the platform. They said to go ahead & board it without tickets. Once the train was full they closed the gates so only ticketed people could go to the platform. Unfortunately, the crowd was so packed in the station that it was difficult to hear the announcement so Dave remained in line to get tickets. Before Dave came to get me they had filled 2 more empty trains & had just opened up the gates for another one which we boarded. They kept the train there until it was packed to the gills. When we boarded it was 9:21 AM. We had been in line for 2 hours & 29 minutes. When we arrived at the next stop they announced to folks on the platform this train was full but that there was an empty train following right behind us. On the way in it seemed that most Metro stops were busy but nothing like the end of the line @ Shady Grove. The transfer station at Metro Center was extremely busy. Anyone who is familiar with that station knows it is a huge station that's nearly empty on normal weekends. The Smithsonian station was a complete mad house. We were directed by Metro Police to the exit away from the Mall to facilitate quicker evacuation of the trains as they pulled in. It took us about 1 3/4 hours from the time we boarded the train in Shady Grove to make it to the Smithsonian Metro stop. The crowd was so thick that that it took us about an hour to make it from the Smithsonian [we did have a long wait for the elevator up to street level] to the Washington Monument [more on this in the next post]. As the day wore on & we talked to people we learned that our experience was not an exception. Several other Metro stations at the end of their respective lines were also under siege by many, many thousands of patriots. They too said they had never seen anything like this before. More to follow.....

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