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Where were you six years ago?

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Road Cycling “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” -- Ernest Hemingway

Where were you six years ago?

Old 09-11-07, 04:57 PM
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Where were you six years ago?

I was living in North Holland. I had gone home early to watch the Vuelta stage and participate in a conference call for work. The TV was on Eurosport (I think, it may have been TVE) when I was called by the U.S. resident member of the con call. As he was dialing up the Swiss component, the picture suddenly changed to the WTC, where smoke was billowing from the top regions. I asked if he had seen that, and he said yes - a small plane had hit the building. I was amazed, as the weather looked perfect. Before the last group joined the call, I saw the second plane hit the towers. Needless to say, I will remember that for a long time.

The response in Europe was very touching. Many of the Dutch staff at the offices in which I was working came by to offer their sympathies the next day. I remember the next day or so - on the Friday as I recall - we stopped by the roadside for two minutes as all of Europe stopped to remember. The radio stations all went silent. Very eerie. By coincidence, I was going to pick up my first road bike ever at the builder's shop. It was a universal event. Upon returning to our little village - close to Haarlem, not far from Amsterdam, and in sight of the Schiphol airport tower on a clear day - many houses were displaying the American flag at half staff.
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Old 09-11-07, 04:58 PM
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foo
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Old 09-11-07, 05:16 PM
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It's been 6 years. I wish we could just move on.
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Old 09-11-07, 05:18 PM
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Originally Posted by 666
It's been 6 years. I wish we could just move on.
That attitude doesn't belong here, whether it's foo, or bike related.
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Old 09-11-07, 05:31 PM
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Playing the Newlywed Game.
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Old 09-11-07, 05:33 PM
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And this is in the road forums section why??

I was across the river on the brooklyn shoreline watching pieces of paper and scalp fly over the east river after the towers collapsed. It's been 6 years now and we still can't fill a freaking hole in the ground because everyone has different ideas (i.e. political agendas) on what should be in there. Good god, 6 years, we could've put the damn towers back and moved on with life already.
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Old 09-11-07, 05:40 PM
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Six years ago today I spent a lot of time in front of the TV all though I did go for a 20 mile ride in the afternoon. (It was a beautiful Fall day) I ended up taking my wife and daughters up to Minnesota's North Shore that next weekend to get them a way from the TV and can remember the constant roar of F-16s coming and going from Duluth's Air Force base that were patrolling the US-Canadian border.
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Old 09-11-07, 05:50 PM
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Carbon is lighter than steel, but both are better than wrought iron frames.
As for wheels, get rims made of some sort of alloy, rather than reinforced concrete.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:10 PM
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Originally Posted by G-Whacker
Carbon is lighter than steel, but both are better than wrought iron frames.
As for wheels, get rims made of some sort of alloy, rather than reinforced concrete.
+1

those goddamn wrought iron frames.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:11 PM
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campagnolo is better.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:14 PM
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With all the bull**** in here, you guys have a lot of nerve to open your gobs about this one.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:29 PM
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Originally Posted by gmason
With all the bull**** in here, you guys have a lot of nerve to open your gobs about this one.
Thank you for your service to our forum.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:34 PM
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Senior year of high school. Half way through the day I learned my brother's best friend, a kid that grew up less than a hundred yards from us was on the 40th floor of the 2nd tower. He made it out. Ran the fasted 5K of his life back to his apartment. Claims he ran it in 13 minutes. I still see him from time to time, just isn't the same guy, though still very polite and pleasant to be around.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:35 PM
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I was on my 16th to last day of terminal leave (of 77 days total) from a Germany based heavy division. I was a month into my first semester of college and worried sick that I would be stop-lossed to do nothing but re-in-process the army, flank guard, and possibly go back to the Balkans (my old unit was training up for another rotation).

Specifically, I was on an off day as I only had M-W-F classes that semester so I was home all day and because I was in California which is 3 hours behind NY, I was sleeping when the attacks happened and woke up to the aftermath.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:40 PM
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At the time my company, and the traders I worked with did a lot of business with Cantor Fitzgerald, and everyone on my floor lost friends that day.

My girlfriend worked search and rescue as an EMT on the pile for three weeks afterwards.

This is definitely a situation where you can go F yourselves if you feel like being dismissive or snarky. Well and good to be around overreacting idiots in Wichita Falls or wherever, but real people are still having nightmares because of actual things they suffered that day.

My GF may well wind up with cancer in the next few years for it, so keep your smart comments to yourselves.

You don't have to read it, you know.

I myself was at work, saw the plume of smoke all the way up from 50th St. I watched tourists take their pictures grinning with the smoke plume in the background. I sat with half our company crying on the trading floor watching the footage.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:45 PM
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I was in school. Senior year of high-school. I went out to the back of the school, and looked across the water from Westchester-straight across to NYC. Watched the towers burn, and watched the smoke rise above the city.

To all of you who just say "I wish we could just move on"...well, I don't even have words to describe you.
NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER FORGET. Period.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:47 PM
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I'm on the west coast (-3 hours) and I sleep with the phone turned off and I don't get up until 8:30 AM Pacific time.

So by the time I got up, everything has already happened. I watched CNN for a bit and came to work about 30 minutes late.

Sales pukes made a large deal that morning, and they were all in CFOs office just next to my office laughing and high-fiving.

I was staring at my monitor, refreshing cnn.com, unable to work all day.

The laughter will stay with me for as long as I live. Most sales people I know are ****ing pricks.
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Old 09-11-07, 06:52 PM
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Originally Posted by Tourmalet

The laughter will stay with me for as long as I live. Most sales people I know are ****ing pricks.
I went to visit my mother's grave - hadn't been there in many years. I couldn't find it so I went over to a small building to look for help. The door was ajar and I heard laughing and such so I walked in. It was the sales office. The salesmen were in the middle of a pep rally getting fired up for sales; all kinds of quotas written on white boards. Pretty sick. Turns out cemetery plot sales are just about the most profitable form of real estate sales. Take some cheap land, cut it up into 4x8 plots and sell for 3 - 5 grand a pop. Do the math.
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Old 09-11-07, 07:01 PM
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Originally Posted by gmason
With all the bull**** in here, you guys have a lot of nerve to open your gobs about this one.
take it to foo, dude.

that is all.
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Old 09-11-07, 07:03 PM
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ummm...not to be a n00b or anything....but I am. What is "foo"?
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Old 09-11-07, 07:46 PM
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I was at home maybe 8-9 miles up Manhattan island listening to talk radio. Naturally I jumped on my bike like and idiot and rode as close to the situation as I could (about 5 miles down the island) and saw -- and heard -- both towers go down.

I happen to agree that we need to move on to some degree. Talk of spending $500MM on a memorial is idiotic. Go ahead, build a beautiful memorial, great idea, but don't waste that kind of money on it. Calling the are where it happened "sacred ground", IMO, is another ridiculous exaggeration.
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Old 09-11-07, 07:50 PM
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Originally Posted by rugerben
ummm...not to be a n00b or anything....but I am. What is "foo"?
https://www.bikeforums.net/foo/
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Old 09-11-07, 07:54 PM
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I was feeling down and drove to college without the radio on (I usually listened to KROQ), and couldn't figure out why all the cars were leaving the parking lot instead of parking when someone rolled her window down and told me to turn my radio on.
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Old 09-11-07, 07:58 PM
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I have a hard enough time remembering what I was doing yesterday.
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Old 09-11-07, 08:01 PM
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I had just woken up and was having breakfast when the first plane struck. I figured some censna or other small plane had an accident as I remembered hearing about a bomber that went of course and hit the Empire State Building. Then the second plane hit and it was obvious it was no accident. I headed downtown (Chicago) on the L to my 10am Spanish class. Around 12-1pm the University Committees and subcommittees finally decided to cancel classes and send everyone home, by that time the whole downtown area was pretty much fully evacuated.
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