Today, eerie it is.

[Jersey mike]

This verse “It was 20 years ago today” from the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band keeps rolling through my head.

As I stood at my kitchen window earlier and looked out while I was waiting for the coffee machine to finish filling my cup I noticed the clear blue sky, not a cloud to be found reminded me of the sky that morning.

I was waiting for my kids to wake up and start the day, they were 4,3 and 1. As I write this 8:05am EDT they would have been awake and probably waiting for breakfast.

I can remember cleaning up in the kitchen with the TV on also in the kitchen and a report of a plane striking the first tower and remember thinking to myself “what the hell, how does a pilot hit one of those towers, this ought to be an interesting news day for sure”. I remember calling my brother who was a recreational pilot at the time “to see if it was him” and after few laughs we hung up. Then I called my wife who was at work to tell her to pull up the news on her computer. From there it went from bad to worse and a couple more calls to my brother and Barbara. By about 11am just after Tower 1 fell, Barbara said she was on her way home, she works 90 minutes away typically. She was home in much less than that. From her seat in the car she could see the skyline and the smoke.

The thoughts of “we’re under attack for some reason” were unbelievable. The news was so surreal. The whys and how comes and who’s doing this we’re constantly rolling through unanswered. I remember the announcement of planes planes being grounded but there were fighters here and there.

As I write this I keep looking out my dining room patio door which faces north/north east and the sky remains perfect as it was that morning and the entire day. A beautiful day forever changed.


Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
~Amen~

[..]

Thanks for those words

I was sitting in my office at work in Atlanta.

[Patrick]

A bit of a too long a story.

A  friend came to out annual airport pig roast [ I spin a pig every year] and asked for a ride back home. He lived in Boston at the time heading up airport renovations. He was private rated and wanted to do the driving. We looked at the weather and monday would be instrument conditions so I said we could go but I'd have to drive, but, the next day was forecast as beautiful. He liked the idea of spending another day with his grandkids so we planned on Tuesday. Tuesday was severe clear, not a cloud east of the Mississippi.
So, I filed and I always file instruments. Off we went, he was doing just in the left drivers seat.
Just west of Albany I got a weird call from ATC asking what we were doing. Didn't make sense but on we went saying we would do or go anywhere she wanted us to go. The NY ATC had pretty much the same questions, The GPS shut down for a couple minutes and turned itself back on without going thru the startup procedure. About 15 minutes later it did the same thing again. Then when we started talking to Boston we had the same questions. Once on the ground we pulled to the general aviation ramp and the line guy came out. We just wanted fuel and a quick lunch and I was going to blast off back home. This fella started telling what I thought was a joke so I wasn't paying much attention just gathering everything up but then there was no punch line. So I asked him, what  ?. He said again what had happened and we were the 2nd to last to land in the world as its now shut down. He pointed to the 737 that landed behind us.
So we hung around calling the tower every 4 hours. So I ended up spending 3 days in Boston, great city ! and rented a car to get back home. It was about 10 days before I could hitch a ride with our charter guys to retrieve the plane.
Anyway, the first plane was highjacked in the southern Adirondacks just north of us and it flew over the top of us unnoticed. We were at 11K so we couldn't see them at probably 25-30K.
The first weird call we got was when that plane flew into the first tower and the second plane hit 17 minutes later. SAC shut down the satellite  system for testing twice reason for the GPS going off line the 2 times.
I guess there are times when we all remember what and where we were then. This is one and so was JFKs murder.
And yes, today looks somewhat the same, its a fairly clear sunny day in upstate NY.

[Jess from VA]

I walked out of my DC building to see the smoke and dust cloud from the Pentagon.

That's not good.

The whole city ran home early.

Like a dumb sh!t, so did I, and it took 4.5 hours to get home.  If you got in a taxi, you moved 10 feet every hour.  Social distancing on the metro trains was one millimeter (if you were lucky).  

We killed a pile of bad guys over the next 20yrs, but overall one has the feeling we screwed ourselves more than them.

The worst bad guys today (by far) are (all domestic) in DC and all city (and many state) governments.  

Who do we see about this?

Meanwhile:  Americans turned away from VA hospitals over Afghan evacuees.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/09/americans-turned-away-from-va-hospitals-over-afghan-evacuees   

[..]

Meanwhile:  Americans turned away from VA hospitals over Afghan evacuees.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/09/americans-turned-away-from-va-hospitals-over-afghan-evacuees   

Disgusting.

Thanks Biden.

Happy yet???