20 years ago

(USA centric post)

My first airplane flight to San Francisco – back when you dressed up for airline travel

I’ve always been a fan of travelling. Cars, Trains, Planes. The anticipation is part of the fun. And with planes I’ve always been amazed at how this metal heavy thing can start down this pavement and magically lift off and …well…. fly. When an impressive plane flew over my house as a child, I’d stop.  I’d look up and marvel at the technology that the Wright Brothers had started us down the road to have. Being on the West coast of the Country my only complaint about flying is that I wish we would invent time travelling as I have to get up extremely early to take flights heading east.  Over time I got lulled into taking the sights and sounds of an Airplane taking off as normal and wouldn’t bother to stop and look up.

What I remember from the days after 20 years ago was the quiet in the days after. I live in an area of my city where the planes typically take off over my head regularly. When the wind shifts and rain is forecasted the planes come in for landing over my house. I work next to the Airport so the sounds of planes taking off and landing is a normal sound that normally I take for granted and tend to tune out. So when all of the planes flying that day were grounded it went strangely quiet. Very very quiet. For the next few minutes and hours the only planes I heard were ones from our local Air National Guard that initially were scrambling to track and follow planes that were not following the diversion orders. Instead of their lazy oval where they would swing towards the Sierra Nevada mountain range and back to the Airport like they would normally do, they went due West to the Coast.

For the next several days and nights the only jet sounds I heard was the air national guard and the after burner boost they’d kick in when climbing to patrol the California coastline. Needless to say it was eerie to just hear those jets and no other Airplane in the sky. No Cessnas, no Commercial Jets, no Propellers.

I knew of several folks that were at an industry conference that had to scramble to find ways home (including trains and cars) because planes were grounded for several days. When the airline traffic got back to “normal” several days later, that 6 a.m United flight that took off over my house made me pause once again and look up. It was honestly reassuring to hear that flight take off.

So as we come up to the 20th anniversary, I’m looking at the technological aspects of the anniversary. Some of the iconic historical coverage is now lost due to the loss of Flash in our browsers. We now have much more technology than we did back then to be able to communicate with each other (some might argue that social media is not such a good thing).

The loss of life is incalculable. But I also grieve at the loss we have now of how the Internet is dividing us more than it should.  On this anniversary take the time to stop. Look up the next time you see an Airplane. Marvel at the technology it now uses to be where it’s at. But at the same time, enjoy life. Because you never know.

(Note: I’m skipping the tasks for the weekend in honor of the anniversary – I’m doing step by step posts on setting up EaseUS and Macrium to make sure you do a backup before the upcoming patching week.)