They come from Los Angeles, Michigan, Florida, New York, Washington State, Connecticut and even British Columbia. They are 12, 78, 80, or my age – whatever that is.

They came because of a World War II veteran in a wheelchair, because they like Stephen Colbert, because they like Jon Stewart. They came for the young people. They came because they never had before. They came to the nation’s capital for the “Rally to Restore Sanity” because they couldn’t remember the last time they were invited to a “happening” where they felt like they belonged.

And they talked to each other.

“I am asking everyone where they’re from,” said Alayne Goods. “I’m 70 years old and I’ve never been to a rally before.”

Alayne called her journey from the Pacific Northwest a rite of passage, saying she had come to Washington, D.C. from Washington State to help the young people.

“We want to leave them a better place,” she said.

“I like Stephen Colbert,” offered 12-year-old Zachary Rogers, while balanced on a rented bicycle. “And I thought it would be a cool vacation.” His mother expanded that she had seen the “The Daily Show” live, but because Zachary was too young to be admitted to the studio she wanted to “let him see this,” adding, “We don’t get to do that much alone together – just the two of us.”

Ann Frederick and Angeline Rook, 78 and 82 respectively, said they were calling themselves “seniors for sanity.”

With tears in her eyes, Frederick explained she was here for her wheelchair-bound husband, a veteran of World War II. “He didn’t fight for this,” she said, referring to the country she feels we have become. But even more, she said she was here for “the kids in Iraq and Afghanistan. What are they fighting for?”

Eighty-year old Angeline had called her and said, “I wish I could go,” and here they were.

Friday afternoon on the Mall: A few hundred people are milling about, scoping out their spots for morning. Dozens of locked porta-pottys on this chilly Friday afternoon line the broad boulevard that connects the Washington Monument to the Capitol Building. Huge video screens are lined up on either side of the Mall’s central corridor.

The city is packed to the gills with out-of-towners.

An enormous drum set seems to take up the entire stage erected at about 3rd Street on the Mall. The dome of the Capitol Building offers an eerie backdrop under the grey autumnal clouds – more like a movie set than the staging area for the most talked-about rally to take place in this historic place in a long time.

Stewart, a comedian and satirist who through his sharp political commentary on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” has become one of the most influential men in America, announced Saturday’s rally about four weeks ago. Beyond the notion that the gathering would be of like-minded people – people who couldn’t afford to take the time to come, as Stewart put it, but who wanted to have a rational discourse – the ideals behind the event have been nebulous.

By Friday afternoon the discourse was already happening.

A brisk wind caught the clumps of aimlessly meandering people pulling their hats down over their ears and cinching scarves tighter, buttoning their coats. But no one seemed in much of a hurry to really go anywhere.

“If I were younger,” Frederick said, “I would just pitch a tent and stay here.”

As people asked, “you here for the rally?” conversations started. Nothing specific. Nothing brittle or particularly political.

Some speculated on who would fill the gigantic stage Saturday. “I think Bono will be here,” Joanne from New York guessed. I had said I was sure Bruce Springsteen would show up.

Stewart and Colbert’s names drifted on the wind in random conversations. People took pictures of each other with the huge rally signs behind them. There was laughter.

A couple of 20-something guys pass by. “This is really cool,” one says.

Later at dinner we met another couple. Dr. John Schairer and Jessica Schairer, he a psychiatrist, she a psychiatric nurse, had traveled from Los Angeles for the event.

“I work with sanity issues all the time, and I could have watched the rally on TV,” John said. “I came to be counted.”