Your 911 Memories

[KSM]

That Tuesday morning in September 2001.

What were you doing?
Do you remember what your plans where that day? Surely, those plans were interrupted to some capacity.
Did you watch the news channels for several hours a day for at least 5 days?
What conversations were you having with your significant other as the day unfolded?
Your thoughts on all the coverage, the visuals, and the footage that played over and over again for days on end.

Anything you care to add is worth reading.

[sean92008]

I was watching Falkie's live YouTube coverage in 2011...
 😁😁😁

I had my three month old on my lap as I had breakfast and the news on. Second plane live while they discussed first plane..

.

[PB]

Got up early to go on a mountain bike ride.

Left home probably around 7:30, crossed the bridge over to Marin Co, drove out almost to Hwy 1 where it rolls along on top of the San Andreas Fault, and parked on the side of the road at the Bolinas Ridge trail.

The ride is 11 miles uphill, first through open meadows with some cool boulders along the way, then into heavy forest. 

I'm not sure if everyone sees the car commercials that are shot in the hills above Stinson Beach and among the nearby redwoods, or if they're just shown locally, but they film a lot of them up there.  Easy to recognize the background once one's familiar with the area.  Anyway, the dirt trail ends at a 3 way road intersection - down the hill to Bolinas to the right, down toward Fairfield to the left, and on towards the Mt Tamalpias peaks straight ahead.  On this ride we generally turn around here and it's 11 miles downhill back to the truck.

Anyway, the end of the trail widens here for some reason, and there's plenty of room for parking, etc, if the gate is open.  That day we get there, and we see a couple of shiny cars buffed out for the commercial, a couple of huge TV screens, and a bunch of people standing there looking at the screens.  Completely quiet.  Normally they would be yelling at us about how important they are, we're ''trespassing'', and don't run into anything.  Not that day, they didn't even notice we were there.

I thought I was watching a movie trailer.

[PB]

A person would have had to be around 12-15 to have really grasped the situation.  22 years later people under around age 35 now likely wouldn't really have strong memories of the day. 

[Rikki Gins]

Remember that Alka-Seltzer commercial where the guy with an upset stomach said, "I can't believe I ate that whole thing."  (Yes, he said 'that' and not 'the' like everyone thinks.)  In regards to 911, I can't believe I missed that whole thing.  I was working some heavy overtime at the time (swing shift) and was coming home dead tired.  On 911, I got myself barely awake enough to get ready to go to work again.  I switched on the tv and saw that the two towers were down and the pentagon was burning.  I kept tabs on things from that point on, but like I say, all of the major stuff was pretty much over.  One thing about my job though, I was allowed to listen to a radio as long as I kept my machinery running, so I got to listen to all the coverage from that late afternoon until early morning the next day.  On that night, I was really looking forward to hearing Art's show but he was pre-empted by the network who had reporters out getting peoples' reactions to the attacks.  I was really pissed off, not just from missing Art, but by having to listen to sad people crying and wondering what we had done to deserve such punishment.  I was super-duper angry at the people who did it.  I would have gladly strangled them all to death had they not perished in the crashes.  And yet it was all so futile at the time because nobody knew who did it.  I'm trying to remember, it almost seemed like Bin Laden's name was mentioned late that first night, but I'm not sure.

[whoozit]

I was flipping through radio stations as I was driving to Pittsburg NH on a solo fishing trip.  Heard something about a plane crashing into a building in NYC.  Started listening and heard the rest on the three hour ride.  A ranger and I talked about it as I checked into my campsite.

[KSM]

Usually I would remember, but I may have posted this thread two or three years ago. Not sure, but all your accounts read like the first time.


I woke (8:33 AM pacific, so most the damage had been done) to hear my wife at the bottom of the stairs with a very worrisome tone as she was saying "people are flying planes into buildings in New York City" Before I was out of bed, I uttered "fuck, that sounds about right" as I most likely rolled my eyes. I don't think I believed her. Went downstairs where I sat and watched. Eventually went to the kitchen and turned on the TV in there as I made breakfast out of habit. My appetite was lost but I cooked anyway. It was overcast with light rain outside. Everything, details, seems bookmarked because of the events of that day. I had a 7PM guitar clinic to attend that night that you had to be invited to and I was hoping it would be cancelled as I was in no mood. Went to the thing and nobody was talking about the events of the day with the exception of two goofs making a plane crash joke, which angered me a great deal. What a dark day it was.

Grabbed a bottle and some beer on the way home where I watched CNN until 3 AM. 

[JUAN]

I was stuck in traffic and knew nothing about it until I got to work - just in time to see the second plane hit.  Two of our people had flown to Miami to do a shoot.  We were frantically trying to reach them - cell phone service not being as reliable then - to tell them they would have to drive the rental car back home. Traffic was backed up all over Jacksonville as the Navy decided to send the USS Kennedy to NYC.  The ship was undergoing rehabilitation in Mayport but still functional.  The crew of the ship and of the planes that would be on it - from a separate based -  had to get through the suddenly increased security.  I got very little sleep that night as the FA-18s flew low altitude security for miles around the Kennedy.  That made me feel sorry for all the poor bastards we were buzzing in the Middle East.

[Walks_At_Night]

I was driving in to work and had Don Imus on the radio. He mentioned that they had reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I figured that is was a small plane that must have got disoriented in heavy fog and somehow hit the building. I remembered at one time a B-25 bomber had done exactly that and hit the Empire State Building. As I was nearing my gig, Warner Wolfe called in as he could see the scene from his condo. He was describing lots and lots of smoke which sure didn't sound like it would come from a small plane.  Walked into our lab and we had a TV in the break room. It was absolutely perfect day weatherwise in NYC and from the smoke it was certain that it must have been a large plane. Our speculation was that a pilot went nutso, conked the other guy out and suicided with as big a bang as one could imagine. Sort of like Tom Clancy's book. Then the 2nd plane struck and that ended that theory too.

[KSM]

Then the 2nd plane struck and that ended that theory too.

Yeah, that was when it all became so sinister as the thinking/assumption that the first hit was a crazy accident was shattered.  The building 7 thing still puzzles me though, but that's another conversation. The 911 thread in BG was a hotbed for heated discussion on the entire thing. Not something that I cared to entertain.