Monday, September 10, 2001, was a day like any other day. I flew from the Oakland, CA airport into Kansas City on business and spent the night at an MCI hotel. In the very early morning hours of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I rode the hotel shuttle to MCI with two airline crews, one Southwest and one American. In the pre-dawn hours, no one on that shuttle could have anticipated the events of the day.
My Southwest flight from MCI to Chicago Midway was uneventful. I picked up my Avis rental and headed to Peace Village retirement community in Palos Park, a southwest suburb. As a drove, I tuned in WGN and heard a report that “a small plane may have crashed into the side of the World Trade Center in New York.” This was about 8:00am Chicago time. I parked my car, entered into the building and began my meeting just after 8:00am. About an hour later, someone opened the conference room door and said: “You’d better come out and see this.” The meeting broke up as we joined the residents at the big screen television to catch up on the 911 events as they unfolded.
By this time all flights had been grounded. The staff tried to book me on a train back to the Bay area but without success. As the first tower fell, I had no alternative but to get in my rental car and begin driving west. I found my way to I-80 which would be my long and winding road for the next 24 hours.
I had some hope that our airspace would open soon: “I’ll catch a plane in Moline.” “I’ll catch a plane in Des Moines.” “I’ll catch a plane in Omaha.” By Omaha I realized there would be no plane home. I kept my family informed of progress and they were anxious for my safe return.
I was contacted by a colleague named Felix who had been on a plane from Cleveland to San Francisco. His plane was redirected to Denver. He was frantic. As a Russian immigrant, he had visions of chaos on a national level. I was able to reach another client in Centennial, Colorado, who volunteered to drive Felix from DEN to the Holiday Inn in Cheyenne, Wyoming at the junction of I-80 and I-25. I picked up Felix around midnight on the 11th. We headed west in darkness.
For the entire journey, I was dependent on radio news reports and commentary. After midnight, through Wyoming and Utah, call-in show dominated the airwaves and crank theories abounded. Ask yourself: What would I think if I hadn’t seen the Twin Towers/Pentagon/Flight 93 crash? What if I relied only on radio reporting? The imagination runs wild.
We stopped for breakfast at the Salt Lake City Airport Hilton. While eating, we saw for the first time the full extent of the tower collapses and the Pentagon event. Also, we now started to run into hundreds of other business travelers, all in rental cars, all headed to various points home from their meetings. Avis and the other major car rental agencies declared “amnesty” on returns to other locations.
About 6:00pm on Wednesday, September 12th, we arrived at the rental car facility at the Oakland Airport. Felix grabbed a cab home to San Francisco, I drove my car home to Danville, CA. Around 8:00pm I arrived home. Over 2,100 miles in around 30 hours of driving; we stopped only for gas, food, and restroom breaks.
When I hear “Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles, I am reminded of that event and that cross-country trip.