September 11th 2001
I’m sure there is no one who can forget where they were on September 11th 2001 - when news started to break of the terror that struck the City of New York.
I just can’t believe that 3 years have passed already!
I can remember being sat at my desk at work, when one of my colleagues informed everybody in the office that his wife had phoned saying that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Centre. I quickly went to BBC News Online to find out more - but soon found that everybody else was doing the same. Pages were taking ages to load, or not displaying at all. Trying CNN, Sky News, and Fox News etc, all gave the same results. It was the first time that I had seen websites unable to cope with web-traffic.. This had to be big!
As news followed again from my colleagues wife that a plane had hit the 2nd tower and then the Pentagon… the feelings that I had were of an alien invasion - like a scene out of Independance Day.
When I got home from work, I was glued to Sky News on TV for the rest of the day.
For me the tragedies in New York ended one of my life’s ambitions – to visit the observation deck of the World Trade Centre.
I had visited New York back in 1995 with a friend, Sue, and did all the usual sightseeing stuff like the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and Central Park etc. We headed down to the World Trade Centre, in awe of its great height that towered above the surrounding skyscrapers. When we got there - we realised that the observation deck was hosting the 1995 World Chess Championships. The price to the observation deck had been increased, and as neither of us was interested in chess we decided against going up. I was a little disappointed to say the least, but as I wanted to come back to NY again, I’d do it then. At least I had some good ariel photos I took during our helicopter trip over Manhattan:
So, sadly we never made it to the top. Sue got married the following year and went back to New York for her honeymoon and I believe that she made the trip to the top of the WTC.
Sadly a couple of years ago Sue died suddenly at work while carrying her first unborn child.
Both of these tragic events have made my trip to New York even more precious to me and highlight the fact that you just don’t know what’s waiting for you around the corner…
Because of this, I don’t want to have any regrets about not doing things in my life and so am planning to “see the world”. After my trip to New York, I wanted to visit the West Coast of America the following year – but sadly that never happened. So this year I booked it!
My flight to San Francisco was originally scheduled for September 11th, but when I realised I decided to move it back – and am now flying on September 15th…
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