BearX220

I flew into DCA from SEA on September 10 and was booked to return home the evening of September 11. We were holed up in a hotel five blocks from the White House when the deal went down; we smelled the smoke drifting across the Potomac from the Pentagon, but were never in any danger (although for a few hours there, with erroneous reports of the capital beseiged by bombs and stray planes, we thought we might be). What I remember about that day is drinking Cutty & ginger starting at about 10:30am, all day and all evening, and remaining stone cold sober while Peter Jennings narrated the end of the world as we knew it. Next to me at the bar was disaster-master Paul "Crash of '79" Ehrlich wearing a tight I-told-you-so grimace.

Our four-person work team hired a Pontiac Bonneville from Avis -- on September 13 I rode a deserted MARC train up to fetch it from BWI, which was as close to a martial law-style armed camp as anything I hope to see in America -- and drove it from DC to Seattle in 45 hours flat. A Cannonball Run without the laughs.