Where were you that Sept day?

Getting ready to teach LAV gunners course and heard it on the radio at work. Witnessed planes being diverted and landing at Winnipeg Airport, and passengers being off-loaded right in front of our LAV's. Never seen any footage until after work.

A few months later I was in Afghanistan.

I was in New York.
My first and only time.
What are the odds?

My boss at the time was going to take us to the twin towers last day of the trade show if we got everything packed up and done in time.

Ended up renting a minivan and driving back to Alberta in shifts because nothing was flying.

I had just walked into my breakfast nook to have my morning coffee before heading off to work and my wife said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. The Seattle announcers were talking about it being like the time the plane flew into the Empire State building but that didn't ring true and I told told her that planes don't fly into buildings in this day and age especially, on a perfectly clear day and just then. the other plane hit.

So I got in my truck and headed to work immediately and spent the next 2 days trying to organize weapons, boats, personnel and logistics for the defense of Esquimalt Harbour and the Base. Looking back on it now, I was fortunate to be working with some of the finest people on the planet which, made it alot less stressful and easier a task to carry out than it should have been.

But throughout there was always that queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that didn't go away for years and still returns, every time I think about that day.

Between clients, business partner called just after the 1st plane hit.

I asked him if it was some bs movie promo.

Arrive at client, boss has the radio on, second plane has hit.
Cancelled meeting, had to drive to a friends'; I didn't even have a tv at the time.
Spent the next 6 - 7 hours watching CNN, thinking everything was going to change.

And it has.

I was at home, between jobs. The alarm clock woke me up to news that a plane had hit the WTC in NY city. I jumped out of bed to flip on the TV. I didn't get dressed that whole day, nor did I shut the TV off for nearly 2 days.

At work after the second tower collapsed everyone was sent home, later that night after watching hours of live coverage I decided to take the dog for a walk and there wasn't a single car on the road it was an odd feeling.

At work at a pressure vessel/piping fab shop. Everything pretty much ground to a halt for the entire day. I started losing it because a friend of mine worked in New York at the World Financial Centre (the two gold-tinted buildings on the riverside in NYC that kind of look like the Bankers Hall buildings in downtown Calgary) that was literally across the street from the WTC. Called his parents here in Calgary that night to make sure he was OK, which he was because he was on business in Chicago that day.

Not to proud to say that I went into a rage that lasted for years, an anger which was amplified and fed from the same type of sites that N Fiddledog spends too much time on. This is probably why my counter-response these days to the relaunch of the Forever War is so vehement and intense, why I'll never ever listen to anything an American conservative has to say about anything. Feel guilty about supporting any of that conservative/neo-con bullshit that came out of Sept 11 and probably always will. Attacking Afghanistan to get at Al Qaeda was the right thing to do. Going after Saddam in Iraq wasn't. Too bad that it's going to happen all over again and that practically no one has learned anything at all from last decade's debacle.