Hindsight

This one’s going to be a little depressing. Also kind of irrational and not very happy.

Jen has been re-watching Sex and the City and I’ve been coming along for the ride. We just watched a cheese puff episode that got really real and uncomfortable.

After seeing the World Trade Center twin towers in the opening credits, the episode opened at a party full of New York Firemen. We think the episode originally aired in 2000.

Reality and cheese puff fiction blurred for a moment as a character said he worked at a station in lower Manhattan. Jen and I exchanged uncomfortable looks and speculated that he was very likely dead.

Suddenly the show wasn’t quite as light and fun as it used to be. 20+ years and it is still painful.

World Trade Center

It took two tries, but we made it to the observatory on the 100th floor of the new World Trade Center tower. It was difficult. Not scary, just very emotional. There were a couple of moments when I was very close to breaking down. Wimp? Yes. Do I care? No.

See the plane?

I think this was the view that affected me the most. I remember seeing a lot of these buildings damaged by debris and I couldn’t help but think that this was the last view many of the jumpers had. It was a very intense feeling.

9/11 Memorial

We tried to go up to the observatory in the new World Trade Center tower today. We didn’t. We’ll try again tomorrow. Unrelated to why we didn’t go up, my wife and I both had some difficulty while waiting in line for tickets. Somehow we each, when faced with the possibility of going to the top of the building that replaced the two that were attacked on 9/11, both got major cases of paranoia and cold feet. It was tough. It will be tough when we try again tomorrow too.

The kids didn’t understand, and they were getting upset with our flip flopping on going up vs not going up. I told them that for people who remember 9/11/01, going to the top of that building is just hard to do. For people who don’t remember the events of that day, it won’t really make sense. In the end we couldn’t get a ticket anyway so it didn’t matter (as mentioned, we’ll try again tomorrow) but in an attempt to make them understand, we walked over to the memorial.

I didn’t know any of the 9/11 victims, or any of their family. The one person I know who was caught up in the events made it out okay (physically at least). The only connection to a victim that I have is through work. One of the airline passengers worked for the company I work for now. It was three years before I was hired, but people still talk about her and the company posts a remembrance on our internal homepage every year. When I was first hired in July of 2004 I had my orientation in a training room in Canton that was named for her.

When I walked over to the memorial with the kids I tried to explain that the fountains are the size and shape of the buildings and they are located where the buildings actually stood. I said that was important, but the real important part was the names. I told them to look at the names and then try to understand that each fountain is completely surrounded by names. There are thousands of them. I was hoping that would sink in a little and maybe they’d get an idea of why their mother and I are so affected by everything.

As I looked down at the names that were right in front of us couldn’t believe it. That random spot on the corner of the North Tower fountain just happened to have the name of the woman who worked for my company. When I put my hand down on the list of names to try and emphasize the scale of the tragedy, it was her name I touched

My orientation was held in the Flyzik room.

Can You See the Top?

The top of the building is only 1776 feet away.

World Trade Center

The one site in New York that Jen and I both wanted to see this weekend was the World Trade Center site. My first thought was to see the new building. Jen’s first thought was the memorial. I didn’t think we’d be able to get tickets to get into the memorial but it was easy and they were free. Prepare to be bombarded with pictures from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The new building is officially known as 1 World Trade Center, but unofficially known as the Freedom Tower. It is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Counting the height of the antenna on top, it is 1,776 feet tall. It’s not quite finished, but it is freakin’ gigantic.

I thought the construction elevator was cool for some reason. At this point I had my zoom lens on and I couldn’t get the entire building into one shot. I’ll fix that later.

You can see the one little section that still doesn’t have the glass outer wall.

1 World Trade Center won’t be the last building built. This is a construction site next door. I have no idea what this is.

The pictures so far were all taken in front of St Paul’s chapel. I’ll let the building describe the importance of the building.

During the chaos that was 9/11/01, we all heard about the church that stood right next to the twin towers and how it magically survived the collapses. This is that church.

Forgive me for getting a little off topic, but I love old cemeteries, and I love old cemeteries inside of modern cities, and I especially love seeing places in New York where the pre-skyscraper age sits next to the modern super skyscrapers. This is pretty much the perfect spot.

My favorite skyscrapers are glass skyscrapers, because you can get pics like this.

After we picked up our memorial tickets I was able to switch to the wider lens. Now you’ll get a little better idea of the size of the Freedom Tower. It’s a huge sucker.

I promise the street lights were not meant to be part of the shot. They just slipped passed my eyes.

I was a little disappointed that the line into the 9/11 memorial had to include a sign that said no guns or knives or weapons. That was one of those losing-faith-in-humanity moments.

The memorials speak for themselves. This was the site of the South tower.

This is the one tree that stood in the World Trade Center grounds on 9/11/01 that survived. It’s been moved a couple of times since then, but now it’s back where it belongs.

I told Jen that I hope someday this site becomes just another park where people go with their families. Humanity has a long, long way to go before we get there though.