President Barack Obama taking the oath of office.  He and Chief Justice John Roberts repeat it — this time flawlessly — the next day. 

Blawgletter's journal of the 56th Inaugural continues:

• Day 3:  We take Metro to — what else? — Metro Center station and a few blocks later score standing room inauguration ceremony tickets.  (Many thanks to our gracious donor!)  After a return to home base, we walk up Georgetown's M Street.  A festive mood animates the throng, whose members dart between bumper-to-bumper vehicles.  We check out the scary Exorcist staircase.  Later we head back to buy a pair of inaugural ceremony blue jeans and an inauguration-special six pack of Opus-Xs (for a friend).  Dinner time gives way to a post-prandial negotiation with a taxi driver for a one-way trip to the Texas Black Tie and Boots gala.  (Yes, he takes us for a ride.)  Friends, politicos, and lobbyists — a frightening number of the last — join us in attending.  Asleep at the Wheel plays "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie", "House of Blue Lights", and — among other favorites — "Cotton Eyed Joe".  The taxi odyssey to home base carries us, unnecessarily, through Old Town Alexandria.  But at least it costs less than the trip out.
• Day 4, 6:30 a.m.:  The infernal alarm clock summons us to duty.
• Day 4, 7:12 a.m. – 8:17 a.m.:  The first Metro train contains so many riders that we can see only smudges of faces kersplat against the car windows.  The next two feature are the same.  We backtrack two stations on an almost-empty outbound.  There we clamber on (barely) for our most intimate (also jarring) rail experience ever.  Our arms ache by the time we debark the Sardine Express at Federal Center SW.
• Day 4, 8:24 a.m. – 11:39 a.m.:  The security check point stands about five blocks from the Metro station, and we make good time reaching it.  A sea of humanity stretches before us.  We join it, and for the next three hours shuffle every five minutes or so to advance about six inches towards the x-ray machinery and TSA personnel.  After we clear security, we walk-run to the standing room area.  A great many others have preceded us, but we find a spot that descries what looks like the focal point about halfway up the Capitol building.  Comparing our view with the images on the JumboTron (partially visible through leafless trees) confirms our squinting guess.
• Day 4, 11:45 a.m. – 12:36 p.m.:  The ceremony begins!  Emcee Senator Dianne Feinstein looks from our vantage the size of a kitchen match.  The announcer acknowledges President George W. Bush to a rumble of boos.  Rick Warren offers a so-so prayer.  Aretha Franklin belts out My Country 'Tis of Thee.  Justice John Paul Stevens administers the oath to Vice President Joe Biden to applause.  A lovely musical interlude (featuring Yo Yo Ma and other virtuosos) plays.  Chief Justice John G. Roberts stumblingly swears in President Barack Obama.  (They repeat the oath, slowly and flawlessly, the next day.)  The crowd goes wild.  Then President Obama delivers his inaugural address.  "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" gets big cheers.  The address ends with this:

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world … that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

• Day 4, 12:36 p.m. – 2:23 p.m.:  Our trek to home base takes us the length of the National Mall and then some.  Giddy people keep flooding the streets and the mall and in freezing cold.  We pause to pay our respects at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as do many others.  You always see someone in grief there, and you never leave without feeling sadness that mingles with gratitude.  We stumble into home base and go horizontal.  What a day!

Blawgletter heads home tomorrow.  Thank you for coming along for our first-inaugural-ever.