Crastinate

At this moment, five years ago, my wife Diana and I were just finishing a meal at a deli in midtown Manhattan. We were joined by my wife's aunt, cousin, and a couple of our friends. We were looking at wedding pictures - Diana and I had been married nine days earlier on September 1, 2001. We said our goodbyes to everyone and walked back to our hotel at 49th and Park Avenue. It was raining lightly.

We had been in town for a few days because I had been selected to present my business plan for the Johnny Walker Keep Walking Fund. The Keep Walking Fund, as part of a marketing campaign by Johnny Walker whiskey, had invited people to submit interesting, innovative, and adventurous business plans at their website. My plan to create a cross country backpacking tourism business was one of 12 out of 1200 that had been selected. We were to present to a board of judges in the hopes of receiving money for our plan.

Diana and I joked that our wedding date would always be easy to remember because it was 09/01/01 - 911. We were floored when we arrived at our hotel in New York and looked at the number on our room's door: 911. Prior to our dinner that evening, Diana and I attended a Johnny Walker event where we drew from a hat our order for making presentations on the next day. I drew number 11. I said "I'm number 11 on the 11th!" After we got back to the hotel, we went to bed early because tomorrow was a big day: I had a presentation to make.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I awoke to a ringing phone. It was a little before 9am and Diana was already in the shower. Our plan for the day was to meet a friend of Diana's at 11am for lunch downtown.

I answered the phone, rubbing sleep from my eyes. It was Diana's dad.

"Do you know what is happening in your town right now?"

"No, I just woke up."

"A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. It's all over the news."

"Uh... ok, I'll call you back."

The first thing that I thought of was the weather, because it had been raining last night. So I hopped out of bed and opened the curtains. Crystal clear blue sky. That was the first moment that I knew something was very, very wrong. I called to Diana and told her what was going on as she was just coming out of the shower. "Well, why don't you turn the TV on?" she said.

I turned on the TV and we saw smoke billowing out of the North Tower. I had been to the World Trade Center a couple of times before, but never inside. I'd only walked around them. About fifteen seconds after we had turned the TV on, Diana and I watched as United Airlines Flight 175 impacted the South Tower.

It took me a little while to register what was going on. It was difficult for me to integrate all of the information: World Trade Center. Hit by plane. Hit by a jet. Again. It began to dawn on me that this was a highly coordinated attack on the United States.

We tried calling Diana's father back, but could not get through. We tried calling my parents, but couldn't get through. We couldn't get through to anyone. But Diana's dad called us on our hotel room phone again. He could get through to us and through him we relayed messages to everyone else, even friends in New York.

We glued ourselves to the TV as we helplessly watched events unfold a couple of miles away. Thinking back on those moments, I've wondered why I didn't throw on some clothes and go outside. I'm pretty sure it was because I was terrified. We were tied to our hotel phone because it was the only way we could communicate with our friends and family, our cell networks were flooded.

As we were watching, the South Tower fell. There must have been some television apparatus connected to it somehow, because the channel we were watching stopped working as it fell. I remember feeling very detached from the experience. "There it goes... several thousand people just died," I said. It was truly overwhelming. All I could do to cope was observe, nothing more. I was able to get through to a friend of mine who lived in the Village. She had watched it go down from her apartment window.

After the North Tower fell, I began to panic a little bit. The combination of attacks on the Trade Center and the Pentagon had led me to believe that this was merely an opening salvo. We weren't far from the Empire State Building. I kept telling Diana that these attacks were a prelude to something larger, just to get the world's eyes on Manhattan. I thought it likely that a nuclear bomb was about to go off in midtown and I told Diana we had to leave the city immediately, on foot if necessary.

To this day, I do not think that was an irrational thought to have had at the moment. Even so, Diana calmed me down and patiently explained that there wasn't a lot we could do about it. If a nuke was imminent or the Empire State was to be brought down, we were just going to have to do our best. If we evacuated, we may end up walking into disaster rather than out of it, she said. I couldn't argue, so we went to lunch instead.

Several of the other Keep Walking participants were in the dining room of the hotel. Many of the hotel staff had gone home, but others had stuck around and the kitchen was running. We were all in a mild state of shock and began swapping stories about the events of the day. One had been in a cab on the way to make her presentation and she saw the first plane go screaming overhead. For another, it was his first time in New York and he had closed out the bar at Windows on the World last night. He was one of the last customers to ever drink in that bar.

After we ate, we all decided to go and donate some blood. We had heard that blood donation centers had been set up all over the city. It was now mid-afternoon and some semblance of not-chaos had settled over our part of Manhattan. As we walked, we saw scores of people all walking in the same direction: away from downtown. The exodus was calm and quiet: people shuffling slowly away from the carnage and destruction. Many were covered in dust. Some stopped and cried. A billowing cloud of white and tan smoke rose over downtown and you could smell and taste the grit of the fallen towers.

We were turned away at the blood donation centers. They had more than enough because, frankly, there weren't that many injured. If you hadn't survived the collapse relatively unscathed, you were more than likely dead. An hour later, Grand Central Station was evacuated when someone phoned in a bomb threat.

That evening, at rush hour, I stood in the middle of Park Avenue. There were no cabs, no buses, no cars, and very few people. The island was locked down, nobody was allowed on or off. It was a movie set version of Manhattan, save for the burning rubble at one end. A jet screamed across the sky and all of us flinched and stared upwards. It was an F-16 sent to patrol the skies and protect us.

Our hosts informed us that they were going to get us a bus tomorrow and get us all to Philidelphia. I was exhausted and slept soundly. Diana, paying the price for helping to calm me earlier, was up most of the night worrying that the Empire State would come crashing down on our heads. The next day we boarded a bus, rented a car in Philidelphia, and drove for three days across the country back to Texas.

I thought I might have something deep to say five years after that day, something wise or philisophical. That maybe I would have an epiphany of some kind in the intervening years that would help me make sense of that day. But there is nothing of the sort. I just feel sad.

This is a dog tag with symbols from the Pioneer Plaque on it. It was sold through the back pages of OMNI Magazine in the 80's. The idea was that if you were ever abducted by alien visitors from another star and later released, perhaps at some old space cantina, you could find the galactic equivalent of a taxi cab driver and it would be able to take you home by following the directions on the dog tag.

I've kept this in my wallet for twenty years. You can still buy them, though the design has changed somewhat. Money back guarantee!