Five years ago

[jwg]

rsc and I had flown back from Stockholm via Iceland on 9/10/01. We got up on the 11th, somewhat jet-lagged and generally out of it and turned on WGBH-FM as we usually do to listen to classical music. We were groggily eating breakfast when there was a news break with something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center and the promise for more info shortly and they returned back to the music. Soon there was more info and we then stayed glued to the TV for quite a while along with everyone else before wandering out to inspect the garden that we hadn't see for a couple of weeks.

At the time my immediate thought was about the plane that crashed into the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945. I was almost seven at the time and we were at my parents summer house in Deal, NJ. There was no TV.

Had we flown back on the 11th (a possibility when we planned the trip) we would have had an extra few days in Iceland.

Comments

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

I had the same initial reaction: "It's no big deal; it's happened before with the Empire State Building." JC, who was the one telling me the news, insisted this was different, this was serious. When I got to work I verified that something was seriously wrong.

The reason I learned the news from JC is that Keya and I had also flown the day before, from the other direction. (We'd just come back from a football game in San Diego.) JC couldn't remember if we arrived late night on the tenth or early morning on the 11th and wanted to make sure we were okay.

Two weeks later I was on one of the first flights out of Boston. I was on my way to Dallas for another football game. danger_chick was also on that flight. I'm sure she will attest to how eerie it felt on that plane.