On the night of 9/11 I couldn’t sleep. Sat out back in my backyard hammock looking due east, the Atlantic Ocean is about ten miles due east of me. Most of that night almost non stop I saw red lights, way up, flying up and down the coast going real fast.
I went out back on 9/11 to look up and not see any planes (that would have been unusual for us) and lo and behold there were planes flying way up there and back and forth. Was a cool site knowing they were there to protect us. I’m on west coast.
No planes on 9/11 that I could see, save for one tiny light far off (I was out at dinner that evening), SF Bay Area has SFO, OAK and SJO, all planes grounded, maybe that little one I saw was a stray GA plane hurrying back in.
I didn't see the planes going up and down the coast, though.
Plane (jet) I saw and heard the other day may have been the Blue Angels, they are in town for a show. But it was a lone plane.
Out here on the East Coast, in the NJ/NYC area it was a different story. You had to be here. I’m telling you there was something flying up and down the coast for most of that night. And a week after that is when all that outbound military traffic began. My dad and two of my brothers, one of whom was working in the city that day lost quite a few friends on that horrible day. In fact my one younger brother was working for a big construction management company in Jersey City that day(Jersey City is just across the Hudson River, west of NYC) and was at the building department a little after 9 in the morning when somebody ran into the building and yelled “The Trade Centers* on fire!’’
He stepped outside and looked east just as the second plane hit. He saw it all go down. Back in the late 70s and 80s I worked in NYC, I used to commute on what is called the PATH trains (Port Authority Trans Hudson) into The South Tower everyday. Yes sir, nothing like The Big Apple. * Everybody out here in the NJ/NYC always used to refer to the place as ‘’The Trade Center’’ . It was never called “The World Trade Center’’ or “The Twin Towers’’, it was simply “The Trade Center’’. Miss those buildings....