Record editor Brian Kelly is in Washington, D.C. with others from the Evergreen State for the inauguration of Barack Obama. He will file regular reports through Inauguration Day.

BALTIMORE, M.D. – A crowd of nearly 40,000 braved 20-degree temperatures to greet President-elect Barack Obama as he made the last stop on his Whistle Stop Tour to Washington, D.C. and his inauguration as 44th president of the United States.

“I’m so excited. This is the most important point in history in my life,” said Heidi Mair, a member of grassroots organizing group in Seattle for Obama called the 65th Street Change Gang.

Mair is part of a three-person group that made the trip from Washington for the inauguration. She volunteered for Obama during the campaign, going door to door and making phone calls to get the senator from Illinois elected.

“He’s the man with the vision for what America needs right now,” she said.

Mair waited in line for more than four hours to hear Obama speak at the War Memorial Plaza. Next to her in line was Sydney Wallace, a former Seattle resident who now lives in Ellicott City west of Baltimore. The pair had been roommates in Seattle’s Capitol Hill more than 20 years ago.

“She called up on Election Night,” Wallace recalled. “I said, ‘He’s in, you got to come out and celebrate. Come on down, we’re ready.’”

The wait to see the next president was more than four hours long for most.

Wallace said they passed the time in line by singing and dancing.

“A few minutes ago, we were doing the Electric Slide,” she said.

The pair said they were planning on attending the inauguration, but didn’t have tickets.

“We’re not concerned about the crowds at all,” Mair said. “We’re psyched, we’re fired up and ready to go.”

The Baltimore stop was near the end of the line for Obama’s train trip to the capital, a 137-mile journey that began in Philadelphia, Penn. and included a stop in Wilmington, Delaware to pick up Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

Thousands watched as the train made its way to Washington, D.C., with the biggest crowd waiting in Baltimore.

Mille Byrd-Nisby of Burien said her family had always hoped for the history unfolding this week to happend.

“I’m so full of pride,” she said.

“This goes back so far for us. My father was a World War II veteran; he passed in 2005. He missed this day, but he always knew it was coming.

“We always knew it was coming. It was just a matter of time. It was preordained by God.”

Byrd-Nisby also has tickets for the inauguration and plans to attend. “We absolutely could not miss it.”

“I’m just so confident there is going to be a change,” Byrd-Nisby added.

“He’s a very wise man,” she said of Obama. “As long as he stays on God’s side, I have full confidence in him. He’ll be just fine.”

Craig Dietz, a former Everett resident who now lives in Baltimore, said he was attending his first political event since the mid-1980s.

“The last political rally I went to was ‘Rock Against Reagan,’” he said. “I’ve never been excited enough to go.”

The only other political event he could recall attending was an Al Gore event during the Clinton administration. Dietz was working as a “bagel boy” for musician Lou Reed at the time, he said, who performed at the event.

Dietz said he would probably watch the inauguration on television, however.

“I’m not even going to try to get close to D.C.,” he said.

Dietz stood next to his girlfriend, Piper Shepard, who was wrapped in a peach-melba colored blanket as they waited to get in.

“I think we’ve all felt a strong sense of repression, almost, over the past eight years,” she said.

“I’m so excited and so elated by Obama and Biden. They’ve raised our spirits,” Shepard said.

“It’s all about the history and all about the change,” said Dan Heitkamp, an Ellicott City resident.

“From worst to best; a historic change,” he added. “It’s the only good thing to come out of the disaster of the last eight years.”

Security was tight for the event; Interstate 83 through downtown Baltimore was closed, and many city streets near War Memorial Plaza were also shut down to traffic in the hours before Obama’s appearance. Police snipers and spotters took up positions on the rooftops of buildings surrounding the plaza.

Streets around the public square at the foot of city hall were closed and blocked by empty transit buses. Two snowplows blocked an intersection at Fayette Street near I-83.

Soldiers from the National Guard walked along streets south of city hall and helped police and Obama volunteers keep the people moving who weren’t already waiting in the line to get in.

A crowd of a few thousand had gathered by 11:30 a.m.; within 30 minutes, the crowd had swelled to a line about five people thick that stretched nearly three blocks.

Local entrepreneurs seized the opportunity. Workers from a Baltimore catering company pushed a cart along the line, offering coffee and hot chocolate for $3 a cup. A young man came along a few minutes later, selling hand warmers for two for $5. Both did a brisk business.

Once the gates to the plaza opened, people were herded in three lines through security barriers into two long banks of metal detectors. People who had brought along large bags, folding chairs or backpacks were turned away unless they discarded the items. Two ladies walked over to a Hallmark store and left their umbrellas there, hoping to retrieve them later.

The long wait outside was more than matched by a longer wait inside the plaza, which organizers said could hold only 30,000 but appeared to hold perhaps 10,000 more.

During the three hours before Obama’s arrival, music played over the loudspeakers, including songs by U2, Death Cab for Cutie, and Brooks and Dunn.

The crowd sang along enthusiastically on a few, including Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” by Stevie Wonder.

The wait was made more frigid by a stiff east wind.

Some couldn’t endure the harsh conditions; several elderly women, and a few small children, were led away from the front of the plaza when they could no longer stand the freezing weather.

An aerobics team came out twice to lead the audience through a short exercise routine to warm them up. Many in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd laughed when they were asked to do jumping jacks or squats.

It was a tough crowd, to be sure, for anyone on stage but Barack Obama.

The Orioles mascot bird was loudly booed when he came out at one point to greet the crowd.

“How about winning some games?” a woman yelled.