My 9/11

I have to tell it again.

September 11, 2001 was my first day back from vacation, a 500-mile bicycle ride from Montreal to Portland, Maine. I didn't ride my bike to work that day because it was due to be shipped back to Manhattan that morning from Portland. So at 6:30 a.m., I was picked up by a towne car to bring me to work. I knew the driver as he'd often picked me up in the past, a Russian guy who liked to talk about how much vodka he'd drunk the previous night, not a very reassuring thing for a car driver to do. But I remember we both commented on what a clear morning it was. You could see forever. We drove right past the World Trade Center down the West Side Highway, nothing unusual. I pasted the WTC nearly every day.

I got to work and I was excited to tell everyone tales from my bike ride. And I was cleaning out the hundreds of emails that had accumulated over the past ten days.

I logged into AOL and my sister, Laura, in Indiana was on and we were chatting. She said, "Katie Couric just said a plane hit the World Trade Center. How far is that from you?"

I told her I was about ten blocks from there and then I started to investigate. From my floor we couldn't see the towers and I really couldn't leave my desk anyway. I was looking online to see what happened but not finding much yet. Someone then walked in and said, "A plane just hit the other tower." At that point I knew it was no accident and I picked up my backpack and headed out of the building.

Someone asked me, "Did they say we could leave?" I replied, "If planes are hitting buildings in downtown Manhattan, I'm not waiting for someone to tell me I can leave." As I was getting on the elevator a lady was coming out, crying hysterically. Just as I was getting on the elevator, they were making and announcement to leave the building.

I walked out of the building and out into Battery Park. I remember looking up at the towers and screaming. It seems strange now. But everyone was doing the same thing. And people were trying to make calls. I had a signal but couldn't get out.

I decided to head toward the Williamsburg Bridge where my bike was to be delivered. I knew a few people who worked in the WTC as I had worked there about two years before for a company called Pure Energy. But the only person I would consider a friend was a lady in her mid-30s who was about six months pregnant. As I made my way through the teeming streets, I happened to run into her husband. He had verified that she was fine.

A few blocks up, a guy yelled from a second story window, "They just hit the Pentagon." I thought, "What a terrible joke!"

I walked on under the Brooklyn Bridge which was still open, at least to foot traffic and under the Manhattan Bridge. It was so strange to see people walking where there should be cars and trucks. At some point in Chinatown, I was at a place where I could see the towers again because there was nothing blocking my view. I thought I saw an explosion but I didn't know what it was, just a huge cloud of smoke.

I finally made it to Delancey Street where there was a truck full of bicycles. The guys there were frantically loading bikes back on the truck. I asked if I could get my bike. They said, "If you see it outside the truck, you can take it." I saw it. They had no idea they weren't getting their truck out of Manhattan.

I kept looking at the WTC and I couldn't figure out why I could only see one building. It never entered my mind that they could fall. That was inconceivable. It still is.

I started across town, toward the Hudson River, on my bike. I passed a bar on 17th Street that had its doors open and was showing CNN on its huge screens. I stopped in to see if I could make a phone call. The manager said, "The phones are downstairs. You can try." I called my parents' number using 1-800-COLLECT. I got through on the first try. At least they knew I was okay.

I stopped in the bar to watch the screens. That was the first time I saw what had happened and the first I saw that the South Tower had fallen.

I left the bar and did something that still seems odd to me. On the bike ride, people had told me that after riding 100 miles a day for five days, I'd be ravenously hungry for several days. They also told me that if I could resist the desire to stuff myself, I could lose a good ten pounds. Well, by 10:00 a.m., I was ravenous. I came around 17th Street onto 6th Avenue and went into the Hollywood Diner. There was only one seat in the whole diner. Everyone must have been ravenous. I sat down at the only seat left with three ladies and ordered the Big Breakfast with eggs, ham, bacon, sausage and hash browns. I'm not sure. There may have been pancakes involved. We all talked about how we felt kind of guilty eating but it didn't stop us.

Sixth Avenue had the most perfect view of the towers. When I came out of the diner, they were both gone. Hordes of people were walking north.

I made my way to the bike path on the West Side. It was almost too crowded to ride but I slowly rode along.

The further I got up into Harlem, there were fewer people. But it was obvious that they were headed for the George Washington Bridge. The lines for ferries to New Jersey were more than a mile long and some people had decided to walk the ten miles up to the bridge and walk across.

The day had turned hot. I stopped at Fairway and bought as many bottles of water as I could carry and took them out to the bike path and gave them to the walkers. But that was all I could do. So I headed home.