pleasant day at the world trade center

It is difficult to believe that eight years have passed since that Tuesday morning that changed the world. The Tuesday that wouldn't end. In many ways has never ended.

What made the day even more

difficult, more bitter for me was a pleasant day spent at the world trade center a few years earlier.

It was a summer day in 1998. Security at the towers was much like it was at any airport. Guards in the lobby, metal detectors, etc. We all had to line up just as at the airport.

This type of security was not the norm for buildings in New York City or anywhere else that I've been. It was hightened for these buildings because of an attack five years before.

After passing security, we were escorted to one of the longest and fastest elevators rides on the planet. Zoom up 103 or 104 floors up. I don't really recall the exact number but it was high.

The weather was even different up there. Below was warm and pleasant but up there; sleet was pelting the windows. The roof was closed do to high winds. As I looked out at our towers twin, I imagined that crazy frenchman who walked between these towers years before. The thought makes me shutter.

A pleasant diversion is the virtual reality ride of New York City they had on the top floor. I take the tour. Sort of a wild virtual reality helicopter ride zooming under bridges, between buildings just the same kind of fun one experiences at Universal Studios in Hollywood. They have a model of the city, I take a photo.

The views from the tower were incredible. I take more photos. Brooklyn bridge, The Empire state building, then the Statue of Liberty.

As I look out toward Lady Liberty a vision runs into my imagination. A thought of a jumbo jet flying low, flying towards the tower. This time I spook myself so badly, I have to leave. I have to get out of there. Away from this place.

The people I met who worked there were wonderful, pleasant, friendly people and I prayed that nothing like I envisioned ever happened to them.

So, years later when W. Bush asked 'Who could have imagined this type of attack', I wondered who couldn't have imagined it.