QotD: Reflecting on September 11th
What are your personal memories of September 11th?
I was staying with my friends Gayle & Lev in Portland, Oregon. Another friend was in town, and she came over to spend the night. Lev woke us up, calmly telling us that terrorists had crashed planes into the World Trade Center. I was still trying to work out if this was some weird joke when I turned to my friend to see her in tears.
There was much mailing, and seeing the net and various mailing lists go nuts, and I posted a really long message to one of them. I watched the TV with the others in the house. I tried to work out what would happen next.
The following day I had been due to fly to San Francisco, and back to London a day or two after. Instead, Quinn (who was also around, and also had to get back to SF) and I hired a car and had a post-apocalyptic roadtrip southwards. I'm certain that I saw a passenger jet fly past us at one point.
Comments
Whenever I finish my probably-too-in-depth travel journal about Italy, I was going to go back and post some old ones including the trip I was on for September 11th 2001. I wasn't in Portland for it, and it was really strange to be away from home and unable to read the newspapers or have access to the internet during those two weeks. I felt I missed a collective experience that so many people had. But maybe that's not a bad thing?