President Obama Leaves Limo Twice To Walk In Parade

WASHINGTON – Newly sworn-in President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, stepped out of their limousine and strolled on Pennsylvania Avenue Tuesday as they led the inaugural parade down America’s main street that pays homage to pioneers who paved the way for the nation’s first black president.

Re-enactors from a black Civil War regiment, World War II’s surviving Tuskegee Airmen and Freedom Riders who battled for civil rights followed Obama’s limousine down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.

More than 13,000 people from all 50 states will travel a 1.5-mile parade route jammed with joyous onlookers since dawn. Among the marching bands and military units are acrobats and even a drill team pushing whimsically decorated lawn mowers.

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials said the inauguration parade route was approaching capacity, but most checkpoints remained open Tuesday.

Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said the entrance at 13th and E streets was closed for the day. It was the only one of 13 checkpoints closed permanently.

People were being directed to other checkpoints to enter the parade route. Wiley said that at 1:30 p.m. EST, the parade route had not yet reached capacity.

Some spectators had arrived at 7 a.m. Most were dressed in heavy parkas and mittens. Many huddled under blankets to fend off the cold. The temperature hovered below freezing during the festivities.

The Secret Service planned for about 300,000 to 350,000 people to line the 1.5-mile route along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Before the parade, Obama urged lawmakers at a congressional luncheon to work together and seek to put the American people first.

Speaking in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall at the inaugural luncheon, Obama said there are challenges ahead and he urged “all of us to come together with a sense of purpose and urgency.”

Obama acknowledged that mistakes are sure to be made along the way, but he said that the American people expect government “not to advance our own aims, but to advance theirs.”

He added that this is “a time of peril but also of extraordinary promise.”

Earlier Tuesday, the National Mall pulsed with celebration and history, as a vast crowd bore witness around noon EST Tuesday to a transfer of power like none other.

Energized by Obama’s moment, hundreds of thousands of people clogged the scene. They cheered the dignitaries as they filed onto the inaugural stand at the Capitol.

Obama walked quietly and with the merest stirring of a smile through the halls to his position on the stand and his place in history as the first black president.

At the Capitol, a Plexiglas shield extended about 2 feet up from the balustrade around the speaker’s platform. Muhammad Ali took his seat on the platform, as did actor John Cusack and director Stephen Spielberg.

Former President George W. Bush and his wife left Washington for their Texas home shortly after Obama was sworn in.

Bush and his wife, Laura, boarded a helicopter alongside the U.S. Capitol. The new president and his wife walked them to the chopper — keeping with tradition — to see them off.

The Bushes retraced a very familiar route — flying to Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland before getting on a plane for the flight south.

The Bushes were first headed to Midland, Texas, for a homecoming celebration in the city that hosted a send-off for them eight years ago. Then they planned to go to their ranch in Crawford for their first night as private citizens again.