I was at a conference in Anaheim. Woke up and checked my e-mail and responded to one from my boss who immediately called me and told me to turn on my TV which I did in time to see CNN flip to footage at the Pentagon which had just been hit. But this post isn’t about my trip that September, it’s about the trip that thankfully didn’t happen.
At that time I had been traveling a lot (like 50%+ of my time on the road). On certain trips, typically conferences that I was doing quite a bit of, I would have my family come with me to minimize my time away from them. My role at these full-week conferences was very busy over the opening weekend when I would be involved in setting up and also teaching a full-day seminar on Saturday or Sunday. Typically I would have them come out mid-week after most of my commitments were done and we’d stay a few days after the event. Being a UA 1K with oodles of miles to burn, I usually had my family fly on award tickets. Back then the award pricing model favored lightly loaded flights to use the fewest miles. A nonstop from BOS to LAX on Tuesday morning would have been the perfect flight (always tried to book nonstops so my wife didn’t need to deal with connections and the young child). I’m not certain, but, I’d be surprised if I didn’t look at UA175 when we were discussing/planning this trip.
But my daughter had just started kindergarten. We debated pulling her out but decided there would be other, better trips to pull her out for. She was in a private school and we didn’t want to start off our experience there by pulling her out for the 2nd week, even if it was just kindergarten. I thank God every time I think of 9/11 that we made the decision to keep her in school.
Back to my story that day – once I learned what was going on, I immediately called my wife. No answer, the phone just going to voice mail. For hours. Now I am panicking – did they decide to come anyway and surprise me? Longest day of my life and felt so helpless. Later in the afternoon I finally got ahold of her.
One other memory – I flew back home on Saturday. I don’t think I’ll ever forget just how eerily quiet LAX was. Hardly any talking and those that were speaking were whispering. It was like being in a library.