I will give my memories.
I was traveling and doing e-mail in the hotel room. I hadn't turned on the tv as I usually did. When I got ready to leave for my local field office, I flipped on the tv to be stunned by the first video of the second plane.
I watched transfixed.
I called my wife who had been trying to reach her daughter who had left her a worried e-mail. This daughter work in the tallest building in the Washington DC area and had been told to evacuate. I called her and luckily got through to her mobile. She was tied up on the interstate headed to her apartment across from the Pentegon metro station.
While I tried to reassure her she told me she could see the smoke from that area.
I told her what was there from what I saw on the tube.
My wife was overjoyed that I had gotten through. I then went to the office and went on-line to FR.
One of the first things that happened was reading Huck's account of walking across the plaza between the towers just after the first plane hit.
After his post we all became worried as we knew his office was very close by and we didn't here further from him.
We reflected how just days before we had a thread where the importance of bin Laden's appointment to the Taliiban Defense Ministial level for his assasination of the geurilla opposition leader was discussed. Had the Taliban known he was planning this?
Was Huck dead?
What of other freepers in the area?
I wanted a weapon in my possesion, but I had none with me and I was over a thousand miles away.
It was a very, very bad day.
Every time I re-read that thread, I do think about Huck, whom I do not know at all. But having lived in NYC earlier in life, I knew what a challenge it would be to get out of there...let alone getting out alive in this case.
Huck, glad you made it.