Do you remember what you were doing on 9/11/2001?

[Brittain33]

I was at work that morning, the same job I'm in now, but in a different building. When I heard about the first plane crash in a n e-mail, I followed the news on Free Republic because it was the quickest news aggregator out there and stable while all the media sites were crashing. Lots of retirees watching tv around the country and posting the news to a single text-based site; can't beat that. When the second plane hit we got a tv going in a conference room and watched together for a few hours until we decided there was no more news to be had. I ducked in and out; no one tried to do work. I was actually on the phone with a friend in SoHo to find out if he was ok when the second tower fell... he was watching it from his window at a safe enough distance... when he said "it's going, it's going," there wasn't much more to say. I said something about keeping the cells free and said good-bye. As I recall, the second tower falling wasn't as cataclysmic to observe as the first tower, because the first tower falling was unthinkable and shocking, unleashing huge clouds of smoke. We'd never seen anything like it. From then on, we knew the second was doomed. When it finally fell, it was just deeply sad.

My plan had been to drive down from Boston to the Jersey shore to spend some vacation time with my family. Around noon I decided there was no good reason not to go, so I drove down, crossing the Hudson at the Tappan Zee bridge to avoid any mess associated with the city itself. I looked south along the Hudson from the bridge but couldn't see any smoke from that far north. I arrived at the shore by late afternoon, with traffic light everywhere, and watched the rest of the news unfold on tv with my family.