After my family and I got back from the inauguration of Barack Obama, with visions of that amazing day still dancing in our heads, I read a column by Gail Collins in the New York Times which called the event "a cold weather Woodstock."
"Hey, now you don't have to worry anymore about missing Woodstock!" my wife told me.
There's no denying Tuesday was a great day. But it wasn't "three days of fun and music."
First of all, it was cold. Really cold. The temperature was no more than 30 degrees and it was windy.
And I was working. I had to get up by 6:30 a.m. at my brother's place in Bethesda, Md. and squeeze my way onto the Metro train, to make sure I was on the Mall in time to make my first deadline, which was before 11 a.m. (We at the New Haven Register were putting out an old-fashioned Tuesday afternoon "Extra!")
I had to interview interesting people I came across, including anybody I spotted from Connecticut ("local angle"). And I did meet some nice folks. But then I had to write out my story long-hand in my notebook -- with cold, cold fingers -- and hope my cell phone worked from the Mall so that I could dictate my write-up to an editor back in New Haven.
Well, hallelujah, it did. It was that kind of day.
After the swearing-in, which more than a million of us watched on big screens, we walked back downtown with the hordes and then used my brother's connection: a friend of his works at a public relations office that's about 200 yards from the parade route. We were invited to a rooftop luncheon and a 5th-floor party.
Warmth! Food! Bathrooms!
It was all great but after about 45 minutes I realized I needed more material for my next story for Wednesday's paper and I wasn't getting much from the P.R. crowd. They were just too well-off. I needed to be in the streets, with "the people."
So I split. I went back out there and interviewed incredibly strong people who had come from Texas and Georgia and elsewhere to take in this moment. They were black and they were proud.
Everybody was happy in Washington on that Tuesday. Everybody was smiling and helping each other out.
In that sense, it was like Woodstock.

Virtually every day there is another scare story out of Washington, quoting city officials about the hellish conditions people will encounter if they dare to come there for Barack Obama's inauguration.
Trains will be hopelessly jammed. If you make it there, you won't be able to move. You won't be able to bring anything, such as a backpack or a stoller (if you're criminally negligent and want to subject your child to such danger). You won't even be able to find a pot to pee in.
I don't care. I'm going.
My wife is going too, and so are our teenage daughters, 15 and 17. We're ready. We're psyched.
We won't have to pay thousands of dollars per night in rent, as some poor blighters are. My brother and sister-in-law live in Bethesda, Md., within walking distance of a Metro station. Yee-ha!
This much is true: if I were elderly, I would not venture into this madness: more than a million people pressed together on the Mall. If my kids were 10 or younger, I wouldn't bring them there. But they're premier soccer players; they know how to throw their bodies around.
I'm not saying we will be comfortable. I'm not saying we are going to "see Obama" in the flesh. We will be looking at the giant screens, along with just about everybody else.
But we'll be part of history.
And perhaps best of all: we'll be able to wave bye-bye to Bushie! Our worst president ever will look out onto a sea of citizens waving and saying, "See ya! Heckuva job, Bushie!"