I was living in DC at the time, at the very northern tip of the city near the MD border, and working across the river in Arlington, VA. I was at home getting ready for work with the Weather Channel on in the background, and I heard Mark Mancuso say that "something has happened at the World Trade Center and all the airports in the country are closed." So I went into the bathroom to dry my hair and after a few seconds I thought, wait, what did he just say? So I went back into the living room and turned on CNN. It was only minutes after the plane hit the Pentagon at that point.

They had a reporter live near the Pentagon and it looked like cars were moving on the road behind him so I left for work, on my usual route which goes nowhere near downtown DC or the Pentagon. (At this point I still didn't realize the scope of what was going on.) But I ran into traffic caused by roadwork so it took a long time to get to the office. When I got there, it was deserted. The management had decided it was best to send everyone home.

I tried to call my boss on his cell but couldn't reach him, because as it turns out, you couldn't make any cell phone calls that day (which is why I still pay Verizon for a landline at home). I went into the Holiday Inn next door and asked at the desk if they knew if the federal government had been closed. Since I work on a project for the Postal Service, we usually follow the feds when it comes to closing due to bad weather and stuff. They said it was, so I hung around watching the TV in their lobby for a few minutes and then got in my car to head home.

I knew I couldn't take my usual route because of all the roadwork, so I started off in a different direction. And I sat in traffic, and sat and sat and sat. Until finally I reached an intersection where they told us the road ahead was blocked. I tried another route and the same thing happened. It turned out that all the bridges between DC and Virginia were all lanes outbound. So I pulled over and asked someone who was directing traffic if she knew how I could get home, and she told me to get on the interstate (66) going west, then pick up the beltway north and swing around in a big circle to the area I lived in. I expected traffic on that route to be a mess but actually it was moving fine. Once I exited off the beltway, onto Connecticut Ave which is a major north/south thoroughfare, I was heading south into DC, but traffic going north out of the city was barely moving because so many people were trying to get out of the city to go home.

Once home I was afraid to turn on the tv. I'd had the radio on in the car so I knew what was going on, but I didn't want to see it. To this day, I will not watch any tv footage of it. Eventually I did turn on the tv and watched the news all day. At one point all the members of Congress stood on the steps of the Capital and sang together, at which point I lost it.

Meanwhile...my family lives on Long Island and at the time my father worked in northern New Jersey. My father had to stay with a co-worker overnight because he couldn't get home. My brother-in-law is a volunteer firefighter on Long Island, and he and his FD went into Queens to a staging area. My sister said later that when they left she truly thought she would never see him again. She was busy trying to explain to the kids what was going on.

My brother-in-law's fire department didn't go into Manhattan that day but they did go in the next day to help with the search. Over the next few months he went to a lot of memorial services for firefighters who had died.

I have several cousins who work in contruction in NYC, and one of them worked in lower Manhatten in the days that followed, trying to get utilities working again. He wound up on the local TV news when a reporter saw him get upset with people who were walking around taking pictures like it was some kind of tourist attraction.

Another cousin is a crane operator, and he's currently working on one of the cranes at the Freedom Tower construction site.

I did my first century in 2003, and I decided it would be the NYC Century because I wanted to go back and spend some tourist dollars in the city. Although I'd been to Long Island various times in the previous two years, it was my first trip to the city. I wound up staying in the Marriot Hotel that is right next to Ground Zero, and my room overlooked it.

In the fall of 2001 I did a TNT inline skating race down in Atlanta. The day before the race we had a big luncheon for all the TNT teams that were there. One of the speakers was the coach of the NYC team, who talked about the team members he had lost because they had been in the towers that day, and he also told us about the NYFD chaplain who he had taught to skate after meeting him one day in Central Park. The next day I saw him at the end of the race and took a picture of him.

I also remember the first time I drove past the Pentagon after it happened, which was a month or so later, on my way to a bridal shower. I was so shocked by the big black gaping hole that I almost drove off the road.

My parents are coming to Virginia in a couple of months, so I'm going to see if they want to visit the new memorial when they're here.

I still work at the same job in the same office building, although now I live only four miles away from it in Arlington. We're on the ninth floor of a ten-story building. Last week they draped a giant flag off the roof and it covered the windows near my cube.

I wore a white golf shirt and black pants that day. Never wore them again, because of the memories. Eventually I donated them to Good Will.