9/11 and Day 100

Today is September 11th and I'm pretty sure there are THOUSANDS of people writing their own personal accounts of what their day was like. And I am fairly certain my day was nowhere near as straining as a lot of those.

What I remember of that day was having gotten out of the shower, I turned on the radio to listen to some talk radio program. I think it was local show before the syndicated shows began. On that morning they had just had a blurb of an unconfirmed report that a small plane may had hit one of the Twin Towers in New York. Me, being the cold-hearted bastard that I am, didn't really put much thought into it.

As I'm driving into work though, the local news station gets taken over by a nationwide news broadcast stating that a commercial airliner had hit one of the Towers. I didn't want to believe it because I knew that would mean something a bit more important than an airplane malfunction. I didn't want to think the T word . . . not yet.

I got the lab and on entering asked if anyone had heard about the plane crash. Nope. I set up the rabbit ears on our rinky-dink lab tv and tuned it to one of the three stations we recieved that wasn't in spanish. It was KSBW, our local NBC affiliate. It was a live, distant, aerial view of one of the Towers smoking from a fairly large hole of where the plane had struck. Everyone in the lab was silent listening to what the reporters thought may have happened. Pilot or mechanical error, or the possibility of . . . the T word.

EVERYONE exclaimed the exact same thing as if we had rehearsed the line thousands of times when we saw the second plane enter the picture. "OHMYGOD!"

I will never forget that image and everyone in that room. We were all shocked. It may have been 3000 miles away, but we felt that plane hit that tower. We knew what it meant. The T word now had solidity. It was an actual term in our everyday language. Terrorists. There is a color chart stating the threat level of possible Terrorist Attacks in the USA. I don't know if it's still in use today, but I remember we'd go from level yellow to orange a lot for a while.

One funny thing to note, though. I know it should be somber time, but we've grown to become wary and the government has used that as an excuse to plant their boot on our backsides to do what the government wants to do . . . sorry.

I got sidetracked. But a funny thing happened when I was listening to the radio several days later. Maybe weeks or months later, I can't quite remember. What I do remember was that there were a couple of radio dj's talking and one of them talked about how he had been in the station on the morning of the 9/11 attacks. They were scheduled to have a psychic reader do her weekly 30 minute call in program on their show.

From what he said, she walked in completely oblivious to the shock and fear everyone at the station was in after the Towers had been hit. Here was a psychic, a sensitive, and she didn't know what was going on.

I usually changed the station or switched off the radio whenever she was on anyway.

And that is my account of an extraordinary day that I pray doesn't EVER get repeated in any way, shape or form. Anywhere.


Now back to our irregularly scheduled blog post.

It's Day 100 of my 30+ Day Running Challenge!

Last time I posted was on Labor Day, a bit over a week ago. And it's been quite a week. Monday through Wednesday were all flat runs. I was pulling my hair out because I didn't know if I would have time to do all I had to do for Saturday's event (which I'll get to in a minute). I had scheduled Thursday and Friday off to hopefully be able to accomplish that. Which I barely did.

Thursday I decided to run Toro Park again after a fairly long hiatus. I guess I was afraid of the trail as that is where I last got majorly worked over and fucked up my foot (pulled my foot and had plantar fasciitis for months after). I am happy to say that it will be a regular part of my schedule because it beat the living shit outta me.

I've described the trail on here once before. Let me remind you. I'm working on getting better and with this daily run thing, it's getting more comfortable, but not better. Toro Park will get me better. Where as Manzanita Park is steep hills and you know you're going to get worked over, Toro Park appears benign.

But it's not!

You go from 140 feet to 380 feet in about a mile and change. It's not much at all if you're used to it. I'm not. It's a constant climb, no breaks. Coming back down is cake . . . until it's not. You can only bomb downhill for so long before quads and calves start complaining.

I am soooo looking forward to running this trail again. I want to get to the running condition I had when I was running it relatively easily again. I think a combination of running the Toro Park Howling Windmill Trail (it's what I call it . . . TPHW for short) and the Toro Park Estates trail (TPE) will help me get there.

I'll be at the TPHW tonight. Can't wait!

GD

p.s.
fingers are cramping from too much typing to check. run smiley :)