Where were you on 9-11? (Page 2)

I recall the time following as well.  I had to fly only days after and the lines were 4-6 hours long and the reserve was everywhere fully armed with M-16's.

But I also remember how kind everyone seemed to each other.  All the petty differences and inconveniences seemed trivial.  The amount of patriotism and coming together was staggering.  As divisive as this nation can be a lot of the times, when push comes to shove, we come together.

I probably will tell my kids that it could have been one of the worst moments, but the best time to be an American.

I was on a trip backpacking through Australia & was at a hostel in a tiny beach town.  I'd gone out to the bar with some friends but was tired so I left early.  A couple hours later when everyone came home an Irish guy from my dorm woke me up and told me to come to the lounge to see the tv, that a plane had crashed in the World Trade Center.  I was a little upset that he'd wake me up for something like that, I figured it was just a little cessna or something but he insisted I needed to get up.  When I got to the lounge room, the first thing I saw on the tv was the tower collapse.  I was still groggy  but I remember thinking, 'wow, that's some crazy special effects'.  It just didn't process that a building like that could actually fall, but I looked around at the other people watching & realized it was real & I was just stunned.  I stayed up after everyone else went to bed watching the coverage until 4am or so & went back to bed.

I found a pay phone the next day before moving on and called home just to check in.  Everyone was fine, although my aunt had gotten stuck in the subway for hours.  She worked in a building facing the WTC and she later told us she'd been facing away from the window when the first plane hit but felt the heat from the explosion through the window.  After a couple of weeks on my trip I stopped telling people I was from NY because of the reaction I'd get.  At the same time, the solidarity was amazing.   It was surreal to be in a tiny outback town and see stores with strings of US and Aussie flags hung out front. 

In London mid afternoon at work.  An announcement came over the speakers -  our company on governement advice told us to leave immediately and get to the Underground stations asap.   I got home and there it was live on tV.  My husband was working nights, he woke up turned on the TV and seriously thought it was an action movie until he tried to change channels.

California time......getting in the car after 5 am Masters practice.  My first thought was 'that's not a funny joke' listening to the morning radio.  Got home, turned on the TV, woke the hubby, and was stunned.

I was in charge of publicity for the local Art & Wine festival that weekend, and in my brother's wedding. Drove up to the wedding (in Napa) with 2 phones going - festival on-off-on-off. Many wedding guests were in the air - got turned around, including much of the bride's family.  Nobody was hurt, thank God, but many missed it. Festival went on - full of American flags and fundraisers.

Kept my kids home from school for days, my 4th grader missed his 'state capital' trip.

This was, as somebody else said, the day in history I'll never forget.

I was on the west coast so I was getting ready for work.  At work they set a TV up in the cafeteria for folks to watch.  My uncle worked in the financial district so a lot of the day was trying to figure out where he was.  My partner though had a rather stressful day cause she was in the air at the time.  It ended up taking her over a week to get back home, partly due to the emergency landing they took (like all flights) and then when the air ports finally opened up there were hurricanes in FL so that added to the delay.  But she remembers getting off the plane and reporters shoving cameras in her face and unable to call anyone cause she had no cell phone, and her parents thought she was dead cause of the rumour that one of the flights took off from PA. 

Kim, your story about figuring out where everyone was that was traveling makes me thankful for my company.  I must say I have always been impressed with their ability to know where everyone is at all times, and can quickly track folks down.  They are able to give the whole company a status pretty darn quickly.

I was actually at the gym too. It was a very strange place to be and everyone at the gym including myself just sort of froze.

My husband and I had just moved away from all our family and friends to a new town. He had started a new job, I was looking for work but had not found anything yet.

So there I was, on the treadmill in a strange place with no friends or family, watching this all unfold. I remember feeling very alone and out of place.

I was thinking some more about that day and how emotional it was.  When I got home I watched the coverage all day.  My son was 3 1/2 at the time and was just kind of roaming around like kids that age do.  I never had a sense that he even knew what I was watching or doing.....he was just busy as toddlers are.

I was cooking dinner and still looking out into the family room at the TV.  I looked over in the dining room and saw that my son had built a tower with his legos......and then "flew" a toy plane into it.  It broke me down in a way that I'd never experienced.  I was so angry at whoever had done it.  I still am.

I was at work in Madrid on the trading desk, chatting by phone with a friend in London. TV's were on showing the first tower on fire and we were discussing the possibilites of what could be going on. Saw the second plane hit and jumped off the phone. I called my wife and told her to turn of the tv and check with the school. Not knowing the extent of the attacks the American school went into lock down mode. Financial markets started collapsing and it was all out until US markets closed later that night. The whole day was flat out struggling to keep up with the flow the whole time. Only after the close did reality start to hit and remember just feeling shock and numbness.

6 months later the Madrid train bombings happened. I was on the train right before one of the trains that got bombed. If I sleep in and get going 20 minutes later that day, I'm probably a memory today. At the immediate time of the bombings I had no idea what had occured. I remember getting a phone call from home asking if I was ok that a bomb had gone off in Atocha station. I dismiss it as those days it was a common occurance that small bombs were going off around the country. A minute later I got a couple more calls asking the same thing. I think ok whats going on here. Within seconds I start to hear sirens, and headlines start scrolling across screens, 5 dead, 20 dead, dozens dead. Fortunately no one from our company was hurt. Unfortuantely a woman from a lunch place I often frequented was one of the unlucky and died in the explosions.

At my work, sitting in a cubicle, when my colleague said to check out the news-feeds and the uploaded video captures on the Internet (news travels quick when working in IT).

It was incredibly, horribly, powerfully shocking.

In Rockville, MD, about 12 miles north of the Pentagon...trying in vain to contact people (phones were jammed, cell phone service was spotty, and the internet might as well not have existed it was so slow).

A guy I worked with casually mentioned that some idiot had flown a plane into the WTC.  I was thinking some knucklehead got too close with his sight-seeing Cesna and got blown into it or something.  Two hours later we're hearing rumors of additional planes headed for the White House, Congress, whatever.  And then the tower fell and I thought, "My God, 10,000 people just died".

My wife and I had just gotten back from our honeymoon a couple of weeks earlier, and we worked together at the same building.  The office closed around 1 p.m. and we just went to a bar and stared at the news in complete horror and disbelief.  We had a pretty deep conversation about the future and whether we wanted to bring children into the world.  We eventually did, but that day certainly changed our thought processes about the whole thing.  I was fortunate to not know anyone who perished in the attacks.

The days following had the funerals, the wild conjecture and speculation, the awful pictures of people cheering in the streets in the Middle East.  It was a sad time to be an American but I was floored by the way everyone in this country pulled together, if only for a short time.

I'll never forget it.