I like your story. Mine is somewhat similar.
I grew up in the SF Bay Area and was also on my way to work when I heard the first reports that a plane had hit a WTC tower.
I remember my first, initial feeling and thoughts and they haven’t changed. My first reaction was anger, not at the attackers as much as our lack of intelligence to be taken by such complete surprise. I simmered to a slow boil when I thought about how eight years of Clinton hand-wringing, double-minded inaction, and partial dismantling of our intelligence capabilities emboldened and enabled these attackers and killers of the innocent.
I, too, was turned off by the first Leftist comment I heard at work, a complaint that this would be an excuse for getting us in a war (as though that attack wasn’t itself a declaration of war).
I have also moved away from California and now live in temperate, mountainous northern Arizona where I feel much more at home spiritually, politically, and culturally. I also love Texas, but couldn’t find a place to live that wasn’t either humid or windy.
AZ, or at least the North/North west of it, seems to be one of the last bastions of actual conservatism. Granted, we have our share of liberals here along the Colorado too, but overall, there is still some old school American ideals/people to be found in quantity.