September 11th -- 6 Years Later

Hard to believe it has been 6 years since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. I will always remember where I was on that fateful day. I'm going to share with you a story that starts about 10 days before....

Richard and I had taken a trip on September 1st, 2001 to London -- my first trip abroad -- we were going to visit my relatives who live in Honiton, Devon, England and then heading to Paris. Prior to leaving for the trip, I remember being very agitated/anxious for some reason -- I just thought it was because I was nervous about my first trip "across the pond". I remember trying to prepare all my things and being concerned about family/friends knowing where our wills and other important papers were -- perhaps I was sensing something wasn't right in the universe, or maybe I was just nervous about the trip. Anyway, I remember the flight well....the plane was full and I was obsessed with watching the individual television screen in front of me that was showing the plane and the flight track....I remember Richard saying "are you going to watch that all night?"...and I did, well, not the WHOLE night, but a good part of it.... : ) I did watch some other TV stuff they had on there. I am not one to sleep on a plane, but I really wish I had....

We got to London the next morning and then we took a 45 minute bus ride to the train station and then took a LONG train ride to Torquay (if I remember correctly, I think it was another 4-5 hours!). We got a cab to our hotel, the Imperial Hotel, which was absolutely beautiful, set up on a cliff....we got checked into our room, had brunch and then decided to take a nap...I think at this point, we had been up over 24 hours....well, then, things took a bit of a turn....we woke up from our nap and Richard went to get out of bed and collapsed on the floor in excrutiating pain and couldn't move...I was panicking and didn't know what to do.... and .... running on just a couple hours sleep and being completely exhausted, I just started crying and wanted to go home....I contacted the front desk and we got in touch with a doctor who made a "hotel call" and shot Richard up with Morphine for the pain to get him through the night and then gave him a prescription for Valium. The doctor told him once he is able to get up and walk, keep moving. It ended up being a problem with a disc in his back. I remember looking out the window and saying "what a view we have!" and Richard, being flat on his back, said "all I can see is the ceiling." You just had to laugh...I felt bad.... But, he was able to get up and walk the next day, but he was still in a lot of pain. So, needless to say, I got to schlep all of our bags from there on out. : )

We were in Torquay (or Torbay) for a couple of days and then we headed back on the train up to Honiton to visit with my Aunt Audrey, Uncle Harold (my father's brother) and my Cousin Trevor. We had a great visit (although Richard slept a lot) and we visited downtown Honiton (where they are famous for their lace), Sidmouth and a few other sites...(man, are the roads NARROW! and people drive FAST!). After staying a few days, we headed back into London to visit Kensington Palace (for those of you who know me well, you know I am a HUGE Diana fan), Picadilly Square, the Tower of London, etc. We took one of those double decker bus tours, which was very cool. From there, we took the Chunnel over to Paris (I LOVE Paris!)....the Eifel Tower, bordeaux wine, the cafes, the french bread, the cheeses...hmmmmmm...yummy! I believe we got to Paris on the 9th of September and we were going to be leaving on the 12th....so we thought...

September 11th....we headed over to Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School/ to take a tour (something Richard had always wanted to do and something I was interested in, since I enjoy cooking (and was a Pampered Chef consultant for a while)). So, we took our tour and then headed back into the city and walked around the city, stopping at the Paris Opera House, which was beautiful....we stopped at a little cafe and had coffee (which is awesome there) and a bite to eat. We then headed back to the hotel, Le Grand Hotel de Champagne. We headed up to our room and turned on the TV. Richard had gone into the bathroom and I was sitting on the bed looking at the TV, and saw the images of the World Trade Center with smoke and flames. I looked strangely at the TV and said to myself, "is this a movie?" and then I heard the news correspondents talking about what was happening. I called out to Richard to come in the other room....both of us sat there in disbelief, not being able to take our eyes off of the TV. When I heard on the news that all airplanes were in the process of being grounded, I knew we weren't going home tomorrow...but what would we do? we were checking out in the morning...would they have a room for us to stay in? how long are we going to have to stay? should we try to go back to England to stay with my relatives?.....these plus a million other things were going through my mind.

We were frantically trying to call out on the cell phone to Richard's mom, who lived in upstate NY and all the lines were busy. We finally got through. They were all OK. We had them call my brothers to tell them we were OK. Richard said "we need to go to the ATM in case they for some reason shut down." So we headed to the ATM, got money and then headed over to the Internet cafe to try to have some contact with home (the Internet cafe became our home away from home in order to keep in touch with friends and family). I felt so isolated. I just wanted to go home. It wasn't like we could just hop on a train and go home....we had had no options here at the moment. I know, people say, "yeah, it was tough being stuck in Paris," but it was when all you wanted to do was go home. A former colleague of mine from Brown Brothers Harriman worked in Jersey City and I knew from visiting that office that you could see Manhattan right across the river. I was worried about her. I emailed her and she emailed me back. I still have my emails from the correspondence with Jen:

"I was just getting out of my car in the parking garage here yesterday morning - a few minutes before 9:00 - when a guy also getting out of his car told me of the first plane crash because he had just seen it with his own eyes! He was shaking, and then so was I. I went up to the 12th floor (because I was supposed to be teaching orientation), and before I knew it someone came running down the hall screaming that another plane hit the other tower. And then we knew what this was (I honestly believed after the first hit that it was just an accident). I was away from the window for a short while after that and then heard screaming that one of the towers was collapsing. So it was only really the second tower collapsing that I watched with my own eyes out of the window. Unreal. There are, of course, no words to describe the scene or the feeling. I stayed and watched in the company of a bunch of my friends on the 12th floor for a while, but finally decided to make my way home at about 1:00. It was a strange ride. Almost no cars on the road - just a LOT of people walking because they had no other way to get home since a lot of public transportation was down. My heart goes out to you and Richard as you are probably more directly affected by this tragedy at this point than I. I am sure that you must be terrifed, and reluctant to fly even when air travel does resume. But I am very confident that with extremely heightened security and protection of American air space that is going on now, you will be safe. My prayers are with you. Please do keep me posted and I wish you a very safe trip home."

The next few days we felt like we were in a fog. We were constantly talking with the hotel staff, trying to make arrangements to stay yet another night; we were calling the airlines trying to get on the next plane out to Boston, and then find out later no flights were going out....very frustrating. So, we tried to keep ourselves busy by taking in some more of the city's sights. On the 12th, we ended up taking a bus tour and met a couple from Chicago (Jack & Paula). We really enjoyed their company and ended up going to lunch. Come to find out, Jack knew a man that worked at my company....talk about a small world. It really helped to have them to talk with; it just made us feel closer to home (even though everyone in Paris was absolutely wonderful during this whole ordeal...they were very supportive and sympathetic). I remember one night we were walking down near the Sein and there were police in flack jackets carrying machine guns....wow...we were now in a different world, a different time. Our innocence was now gone....a chill went up my spine....

We finally booked a flight to Miami on the 15th, since it was still unknown if the flight that day to Boston would depart. I didn't care where we flew to in the U.S., I just wanted to get back to the states. The airport in Paris was a madhouse....lines everywhere...didn't know where to stand or if you were standing in the correct line. Police walking around with flack jackets and machine guns. After standing in about 3 lines and finding out we needed to stand in another line, I lost it and totally broke down crying. One of the airline personnel ladies took pity on me and got us a good place in line. It was very nerve wracking being in this environment where everyone is looking at everyone else wondering if they were a terrorist...it just made me sick and I was so scared to get on a plane, afraid that it would get hijacked....once they boarded our plane, we knew we were one step closer to home, and that gave us some solice. But it was really awful on the plane how everyone was just looking around and looking nervous. The plane was really quiet. We were just mentally and physically exhausted. Once the plane landed in Miami, everyone started clapping and cheering. I was so happy to be back on U.S. soil again! But, our journey had not yet finished. We had a flight to catch to New Haven, CT. It kept getting delayed, but we finally took off. We had reserved a car in New Haven and we were concerned about whether the car place was still going to be open (we weren't going to be arriving until about 1:45 am). Thankfully, we caught them just before they were closing and we got in our car and started driving.....now, I have to say, at this point, we had probably been up, what, 30 hours??? We drove home and it was so eerie...flags were flying everywhere...we were home.....we were so glad to be home.