Most of the government employees in my office are teleworking. As a contractor, I have no such luxury, so I am in the office, mostly answering phone calls from people amazed to learn I am physically in the office.
The crowd of people forming up to watch this parade has been flowing past our office as wide as the broad sidewalks of DC can hold, dense and continuous, for over FOUR SOLID HOURS. For a “work day,” or at least a non-inauguration day, this is a huge crowd for this area.
The mood of the crowd seems light. The Cup has not appeared yet, but most of the people on the street seem to have an “At least I’m not working” casualness about them, and may not even be hockey fans.
Getting home tonight will be bad. The parade ends one half an hour before I leave work, and actually touches the Metro station entrance i use to get home.
Watching it on CNN; the Mall looks packed. This crowd is going to be mostly locals, meaning they won’t walk a block to their hotel. They’re all either driving or taking the Metro. It will be sardine city thru rush hour.
All my least favorite journeys on Metro have been tied to sporting events. The worst was going to a Nats-Red Sox game on the Red Line on a weekday night. Sold out game, and it was the day after that horrific crash outside Fort Totten that killed 9 people, so the trains were running really slow and on manual mode. We were so tightly packed I thought I was going to get compression asphyxia. Second worst was leaving RFK the day David Beckham came with the LA Galaxy. 55,000 people showed up. I think we ended up deliberately going in the wrong direction for a few stops in order to then switch sides and try to get on a train before everyone else.
My daughter had her Middle School graduation at 10:00 AM for some reason, and afterward, I had plans to head to the Metro and go on into work. Until every parking spot in every Metro station was filled. I hope DC never wins another championship in any sport ever!
My commute home was terrible, but it had nothing to do with the Capitals. Train wasn’t crowded, just late for “schedule adjustments,” causing me to miss my bus. The next bus was 15 minutes late – and it runs every 18 minutes, so that’s pretty late. net result was 40 minutes longer than usual getting home, but none of it related to the event, just run-of-the-mill incompetence.
I didn’t really have any problem getting home on Metro yesterday (at about 4 PM) – a few more boisterous and mildly inebriated hockey fans than usual, but that was it. No delays and no overwhelming crowds.
