The one thing I was not: alone for the inauguration.  
Right after Obama won the election an old friend, Stephen, called me and said: "We are going to D.C.  I have a friend who lives on Capitol Hill and will let us use his house to stay for the inauguration".  Bobby and I were in immediately.   I scoured the web for plane tickets.  They were almost immediately $1000, but I eventually found one with a stopover that I could buy with miles in an account I rarely use and quickly hit the purchase button.  It was more than worth it and I cannot thank my friend enough for including us.
On Tuesday morning, I woke up to sirens that seemed to be continuous for the next several hours as the police escorted in all the busses, bands, dignitaries, etc.  I got up, made coffee and got everyone else out of bed.  We left the house by about 7 AM, and by then the throngs of people were already thick.  We took two and a half hours to walk about halfway down the Mall to a point where they were accepting people.  The National Park Service had already shut the front portions.  We got to our space at about 9:30 and staked out a small stone ledge we could stand on to see the monitors.  Over the next hour people filled in around us, and our space slowly shrank as we all jostled around to make sure everyone could see.  
The mood was ebullient.  People were holding their ground, but they were chatting, smiling, cheering, sharing stories and basically rejoicing.  I had no idea so many people could get together and be so patient, so kind, and so silent when needed.  It reminded me of a college football game ten times over, but everyone in the crowd was on the same team and no one was disorderly.  Even when we left, the streets were so full of people for blocks and blocks that in some places you could barely move, yet somehow no one shoved (hard anyways), no one swore and it seemed as though everyone realized that everyone else mattered and had friends or family they were trying to keep together.
The only negative time was when GW Bush appeared and the crowd booed him.  After the ceremony, we all saw him take off and fly over us in a helicopter.  That’s when I sensed the sigh of relief in everyone and a few people chanted “hey, hey, hey, good bye…â€.  Then we all started to make our way home, to another TV where we could watch the rest of the day, finally grab something to eat and have a glass of champagne to celebrate.