Where were you?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Griff

I remember feeling guilty later in the week when appreciating how beautiful the sky was without any contrails and how quiet the woods were with no air traffic.

It was kind of nice while we had that, wasn't it?

I was at work, and heard about it by an office e-mail that went around. They set up a TV in the cafeteria, and the place was standing room only as we all watched the towers fall. There were lots of false rumors going around. A bomb at the State Department, one on Metro, Metro being shut down. It was all kind of confusing and pretty scary. A few people were crying. I went around trying to comfort some of the people in my department, and get them thinking clearly. Mostly folks were worried about their loved ones, who they couldn't reach because the phone circuits were overloaded. I think I helped to calm a few people down. Then my firm closed. Nobody was working anyway.

I left a voicemail for my wife at home, letting her know I was OK, and that I was going to walk home, I had heard a rumor that Metro was closed, and even if it wasn't I didn't want to be trapped in the Metro tunnel. I felt like I had options if I was above ground. When I got outside, the place was gridlocked. The intersections weren't moving, which was great if you are a pedestrian. You just walk around all the cars. I made it home much faster than if the traffic was actually moving and I had to wait for lights.

My walk home would have taken me within one block of the White House, but I went a few blocks out of my way to stay away from that potential target. I kept looking up at the sky for planes, and imagined what I might do if I saw one heading towards me, but the sky was empty. After awhile there were a few fighters flying around, but that was it. Lots of sirens all over the place on my walk home.

There was one point where I crossed over a bridge into Georgetown over Rock Creek Park, and I could see the huge cloud of smoke billowing out of the Pentagon. I stopped to watch it for a while and take the whole scene in. Fighter jets flying around overhead, sirens all over the place, oily black smoke filling the sky a mile or two away. It was bad.

Then as I got closer to home, things started to seem more normal. It was a drop dead gorgoeus fall day. I walked into my living room, hugged my family. We turned off the TV, and just enjoyed each other's company. We were happy to be alive and it really was a beautiful day outside. I think we went to the playground for a couple hours.

[Spexxvet]

I was at work, in South Jersey. One of my coworkers got a call from her husband that a plane hit one of the twin towers. I pointed out that some idiot in a small plane must have really fucked up. Then tne husband brought in a tv. We watch between patients. Someone on the tv said 50,000 people could be in each tower at any given moment. When they collapsed I thought there go 20-25,000 people. I was amazed that so few died. And I agree that the plane-free sky was eerie and beautiful. When air traffic resumed, I caught myself looking up when a plane went overhead.

[dar512]

I was just arriving for work -- at the Sears tower. Before I got to my desk they announced on the PA that they were clearing the building. I went home and made the mistake of turning on the TV. I'm not the sort that slows down at accident sites, but I could not turn the TV off all day.

[Pangloss62]

I was with my Brasilan enamorada, Solange, in a small-but-nice hotel in San Francisco. It was our first visit to that beautiful city. I came out of the bathroom after a shower and saw the image of the WTC towers smoking. The sound was off. For a moment, Solange and I thought it was a movie. Then when we realized what was happening, we both cried and held each other. We decided to go to SF instead of NYC only a month before.

Brasilians don't always like America or Americans, but at this time I could feel how sorry Solange felt for our country. NYC is like a mecca for many Brasilians.

[busterb]

I was doing some welding at a friends shop, when one of his bright young hands came in and told me. I said yeah right ya been listening? to war of worlds.

[catlyke]

I was at work...I suppose the office manager had news on her radio because we had not been there very long before she told us a plane had hit one of the towers, and we thought like a lot of people that it was just a horrible accident. We turned on the tv in the conference room and stayed tuned all day through a staticky, crappy signal.

At the time I worked in a new building that was part of an area being developed, on the northwest side of Dallas into Las Colinas, close to the airport but still separated by fields and vacant land. You could see the airport tower from our parking lot. When all the planes were grounded, it was eerie to go outside and hear the silence coming from the empty sky.

[jinx]

On vacation, which has become a tradition for us.

Took this pic this morning, right before we found higher ground for the Jeep as the tide was still coming in...
Still flooded here due to Ernesto, but its all good...

[lookout123]

i was laying in bed holding my 3 month old son watching CNN talk about the plane that hit the tower... when i saw the 2nd plane hit i was overwhelmed with sorrow because i realized the world had just changed. we were at war, but we didn't yet know who it was with.

i went to work a couple hours later (car dealership) the sales manager was all excited trying to get us to start cold calling past customers because "everybody is at home in front of the tv - you should be able to get ahold of a lot of people today!" the owner sent him home after realizing that a couple of sales people weren't joking about the death threats sent his way.