Back safe at home on Thursday afternoon, Douglas High School senior Andrew Solomon described the roar of the crowd he had faced two days earlier in the nation's capital.
"When the first family came out, people started going bananas," Solomon said. "It was like a hockey game times hundreds of thousands. There was this rush of air. A sea of people all the way back to the Lincoln Memorial. There were millions of American flags."
The inauguration of President Barack Obama was extremely personal for Solomon. November was the first election he was old enough to vote in. Before that, he spent six months in Washington, D.C., in the Senate Page program, an experience which he said disillusioned him, seeing how little gets done at the federal level.
But that's changing, he contends. Standing in the wintry cold behind the capital's reflecting pool, he witnessed firsthand the swearing in of the man he had voted for in November.
"There was just this electricity," he said. "Everybody was so excited about everything. People who didn't know each other were high-fiving and hugging."
Solomon said he and his two friends, whom he met during his Page appointment, got up at 4 in the morning on Tuesday to beat the crowds, but the crowds were already ahead of them.
"We finally got into the Metro, and it was the craziest thing," he said. "The whole station was packed full of people. Then they wouldn't even let people into the station any more. Faces were smooshed against the windows. People were getting running starts trying to throw themselves on the train."
Solomon also recalled the celebrities he encountered during his adventure in the city: Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx and Tom Hanks, among others.
"It was awesome to see all those famous people," he said.
But it was one person who drew Solomon into the heart of the nation.
"Obama's speech was excellent," he said. "It was not what I was expecting. It was realistic and down to earth, a good reality check. It acknowledged that people are excited, but also that things are not going to change over night. It talked a lot about public service and patriotism, which I liked."
Solomon said the crowd experienced a "bottle neck effect" after the inauguration ceremonies.
"There was one street that went to the Metro," he said. "We moved very slowly. We weren't going anywhere. Everyone was singing and partying. There were vendors all over the place. I got an Obama shirt and some buttons."
Knowing the area, Solomon and his friends circumvented the crowd and found another way out. They would later go their separate ways, Solomon flying back to Nevada, his friends staying on the East Coast, but they would never forget what they had seen.
"I really got a sense of duty, a desire to serve my country," Solomon said. "It was something special being a part of it."
