I missed 9/11. I got

I missed 9/11. I got on a flight from Heathrow to Dallas, Texas around 4am ET, and I was somewhere over Greenland when the first plane hit. The first newspaper I read in the back of a cab around 5pm ET in Toronto gave me my first visual of the day. The experience for the large majority of people in this country was sitting on the couch transifxed by the television and talking to anyone and everyone they could on the phone. I didn’t experience that, so the day sits somewhat differently for me. It’s the front page of the Toronto Globe and Mail that I’ll always remember. Specifically a quote from an angry, passionate editorial: “…they used our own damn planes…”

Not only did they use our own damn planes, but they attacked us in a way we never expected. It’s the cowardly creativity that hurts me the most.

Today Ashcroft announced authorities arrested an al-Qaida operative who was tasked with bringing down the Brooklyn Bridge, among other things. Bringing down the Brooklyn Bridge. I can’t explain to you how that makes me feel. I have stood exactly where this picture (taken from the cover of msnbc.com), was taken. We would get a keg and a stereo and party there in high school. I would run across this bridge multiple times a week during cross-country practice. It’s walking distance from the school I went to for 11 years—we would have lunch in it’s shadow.

…

Just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach. The emotions I feel just thinking about it far outweigh anything I felt about the war in Iraq though. I’m not sure what that means.