My 9/11

Kim came in the bedroom and said “Rob, they hit the towers.” I was groggy, it’s was close to six in the morning. I stumbled out of bed and walked into the living room. The TV was tuned to the news and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A live shot of World Trade Center One, smoke billowing out of a giant hole. Kim went on “They say it’s terrorists.” I didn’t have anything to say, what could I say.

We sat stunned and listened to the punditry speculate on what was really going on. Fifteen minutes later we watched in horror as a second plane came into view and slammed into the second tower. My heart was racing. Was that a replay of the original hit? No, couldn’t have been, Tower One was in view as the plane hit. All I could think was, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, ARE WE AT WAR?

We were glued to the TV. We watched and listened. Then Tower Two collapsed. Not long after that Tower One came down. We were horrified. I don’t know how else to describe how everyone felt.

I sat on the couch for a while, the news was pretty much showing the same stuff over and over. We didn’t know what was going on. I got up, took a shower, and got ready for work.

I arrived at work sometime after nine, and tried to get through to CNN and MSNBC. Web sites were flooded with traffic, I couldn’t get through. Dave Winer’s Scripting News was still up and running, so I kept refreshing it every few minutes while trying to get through to CNN. Hitting CNN seemed futile, I stuck with Scripting News.

I was still working at Microsoft at the time. At some point that day we all received email saying we could go home. I was so distracted I couldn’t get anything done so I went home.

I wrote how I was feeling that day, and in the days to follow. Remember, we didn’t have Facebook or Twitter back then, just a nice network of webloggers. (Start where the link takes you and scroll up.)

Robert Scoble’s son, Patrick, provided us with a bit of hope at the end of the week with a beautiful picture. I saved it. The original link to Robert’s Manilla page is gone. I have no idea where that post lives now. It seems like Robert has allowed his weblogging history to disappear. That’s a real shame.