8 years
I had just gotten the Escort back the day before, and had made arrangements to drive out to Riverside to finish off some research I had to do for a paper that I wanted to urn in to get rid of in Incomplete. I woke up around 7:00 to my cell phone ringing, and it was a friend of mine whom I occasionally saw but hadn't heard from in a couple months. He told me just to turn on the television, and that was about the same time that the first tower went down. I woke up Poofy and got him into the living room, as well as azarsuerte who happened to have crashed at our place the night before.
I still had to go to Riverside, so I packed up my things and got going. I had never seen the Hollywood Freeway through downtown Los Angeles so eerily empty during daylight. I got to RPL and did my research; they had a network feed on CNN going all day. On my way back I stopped by my friend Mike's place in Cucamonga, and we talked for a while while going through channels on TV. The only stations that weren't running ongoing news feeds were Nickelodeon and TBN (The Brainwashing Network). Some were running feeds from networks as far away as SABC in Cape Town and ABC in Sydney. Even KCOP (which at the time was a UPN affiliate) had picked up the FOX network feeds.
A couple things that really stood out from those few days:
1. The footage of W being told and looking like he soiled himself.
2. Driving by Ontario Airport and seeing the Freeway Vision signs say "ONT AIRPORT CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE" and later seeing signs that LAX and the portions of Sepulveda that go through it were shut down tight.
3. Getting a message from a friend saying "If I have to see that fucking plane one more time..."
4. Getting a batch email from one of our professors saying that she had been en route home from Germany and was currently stuck in Paris. (I mentioned to her when I saw her after term started that I could think of far worse places to be stuck in, and she laughed.)
I still had to go to Riverside, so I packed up my things and got going. I had never seen the Hollywood Freeway through downtown Los Angeles so eerily empty during daylight. I got to RPL and did my research; they had a network feed on CNN going all day. On my way back I stopped by my friend Mike's place in Cucamonga, and we talked for a while while going through channels on TV. The only stations that weren't running ongoing news feeds were Nickelodeon and TBN (The Brainwashing Network). Some were running feeds from networks as far away as SABC in Cape Town and ABC in Sydney. Even KCOP (which at the time was a UPN affiliate) had picked up the FOX network feeds.
A couple things that really stood out from those few days:
1. The footage of W being told and looking like he soiled himself.
2. Driving by Ontario Airport and seeing the Freeway Vision signs say "ONT AIRPORT CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE" and later seeing signs that LAX and the portions of Sepulveda that go through it were shut down tight.
3. Getting a message from a friend saying "If I have to see that fucking plane one more time..."
4. Getting a batch email from one of our professors saying that she had been en route home from Germany and was currently stuck in Paris. (I mentioned to her when I saw her after term started that I could think of far worse places to be stuck in, and she laughed.)