story3488.xml

story3488.xml

born-digital

story

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2002-09-11

My girlfriend Robyn and I planned on being out of work on September 11, 2001, and going for a bike ride across the Minuteman Rail Trail from Bedford, MA. into downtown Boston. The plan was to have lunch there and bike back. We headed out of Worcester, MA. at about 7:30 am., car packed, bikes on the rack. It was gorgeous weather and we congratulated ourselves on our choice of days.
We got to Concord Common a little before 8:30. I parked my car in a public lot just outside the Common area. We had our bikes off the rack and headed out, all before the attacks occurred. We had to bike over to the trail head, in the next town, and arrived without incident.
Once we got on the trail, we thought it odd that all we could hear along the way were talk radio shows. And loud. No music. There were a lot of contractors and builders around Lexington at that time, and all truck radios were at full blast. We stopped at a bench along the way about 10:30 and could hear church bells ringing in Lexington Center. We were laughing, thinking they were practicing Christmas music. Hark,the Herald Angels Sing it sounded like. We even started singing. Talk about irony.
We got into downtown Boston via Commonwealth Ave at just about noon. Lunch was at a sidewalk cafe we picked out, doubling back after making our choice. We entered the dark interior to find every customer in the restaurant clustered around the bar, the TV blaring. We couldn't see the screen from where we stood. We shrugged it off and picked out a table back out on the sidewalk, doing an about face in the doorway. Our waitress was not talkative, not a word about any of the tragedy that happened. And we were too far from the TV inside to hear what was going on. Traffic headed past on busy Commonwealth Ave, and nothing seemed out of whack. We did not pick up on any conversations coming from pedestrian traffic passing by.
And then we headed back. We wanted to beat the 5 o'clock exodus down Route 2 heading west out of Boston. We passed the entrance to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford at about 3:30. The cars were lined up on the narrow access street, and police were not letting a lot of angry people through the gates. Still, we had no clue nor did we stop to investigate or listen to what the police were saying.
When we got back out to Main Street in Concord, Robyn decided to call her mom on the cell phone just to let her know where we were and when we would arrive home. When Robyn screamed into the phone, and relayed the information to me, we just looked at each other and claimed it couldn't be true. We peddled back to the parking lot, found that my car, the only one left, was chained in. The state had declared all national landmarks off limits and fair targets for any other destruction that might go on. I called the police and they told me one of the gates didn't have a lock on it, to just put the chain back when we left. All the way home in the car we couldn't talk, ears tuned to the radio. Once home, my husband was in front of the TV, by now it was after 5:30, and I saw my first view of the planes hitting the Towers.
Robyn and I still can't believe we spent the whole day in ignorant bliss, ignoring tell tale signs along the way. My overwhelming sadness at what happened was postponed, but I shall never forget how ironic it was that Robyn and I didn't recognize the possibly of something of that magnitude happening in our country, along with the rest of America. Any carefree, naive, escaping-for-the-day thinking I ever have again will always be on the lookout for those tell tale signs of something gone seriously wrong.