
The Yankees hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks for games 3 to 5 in the 2001 World Series that was delayed because of the attacks on September 11th, a little more than a month earlier. I went to two of the games and visited “ground zero” in October 2001.
It was an unusually hot day in September. I must have been in a hurry because I didnât bother to turn on the Today Show or the Morning Edition on Colorado Public Radio while getting ready for my commute to work in Denver.
This particular morning I took the Regional Transportation District (RTD) route 205 bus from the stop near my Boulder condo to the RTD Walnut Street station in downtown Boulder.
The bus stop was next to the convenience store where I stopped most days for a cup of coffee.
âLooks like itâs going to be a good one out there,â I donât think the dark-skinned clerk understood a word I said about the great weather predicted for the day. He grinned and handed over my change. I clunked a couple cents into the plastic leave-a-penny take-a-penny tray on the counter and cut through the gas pumps to the bus stand.
From the downtown Boulder bus station, few passengers waited to catch the B Express bus to Denver. Thereâs no free parking. I was okay with transferring from a local bus downtown so as to get the seat of my choice, which was one with extra legroom toward the middle of the cabin a couple rows ahead of where a wheel chair would be parked â similar to the exit row seats on an airplane.
By the time we reached the last Boulder stop at the Table Mesa Park ân Ride, the seats were filled with commuters rattling their morning papers, cramming for college classes at the Auraria campus, reading books, listening to music on iPods, catching up on sleep.
This was well before laptops internet hot spots and smartphones. I was one of the few who had a cell phone. It was the size of a small box of Velveeta cheese. I didnât think to call anyone.
âDid you hear what happened in New York,â the guy sitting to me asked. âNo, I hadnât heard anything.â
âAn airplane crashed into one of the Twin Towers,â he said. âNo, I hadnât heard. What kind of plane?â The guy shrugged.
Other passengers murmured about the news and I overheard, âIt was a small plane, like a Cessna.â Hmmm, small plane, nothing to see here, folks, and soon we all returned to being immersed in ourselves.
The bus pulled up to a stall in Market Street Station. We disembarked and made our ways up the stairs and escalators to the 16th Street Mall.
My connection on 17th Street was for the eastbound RTD 20 bus that dropped me off near my work in a converted single-family home in an older neighborhood.
I walked up the steps and creaked open the wrought iron screen door before winding my way up the stair case towards my office.
âYou can go home if you want,â my boss greeted me at the top of the stairs. âTwo planes hit the World Trade Center. There isnât much more information but all the air traffic is grounded.â
âThere was talk on the bus about a plane hitting one of the towers,â I said.
My colleagues had all gone. I had the longest commute to and from Boulder and the last to hear.
I walked back to the bus station and noticed the eerily quiet streets – no car engines, no airplane noise, not many people out and about. When I stood waiting for the light at Broadway and the 16th Street Mall, I glanced up at the Denver World Trade Center that I later learned was a similar target as its namesake in Lower Manhattan.
The bus back to Boulder was a-buzz with rumor, but I didnât engage.