Each year as we flick our calendes to September 11, I am sure we all stop and think and reflect.  For me I was on a plane flying from Sydney to San Francisco for a Sun meeting.  I landed at SFO only a few hours after the events in New York that morning.  I now know why we were escourted into SFO by fighter jets. 

I can remember landing at SFO and the airport was been cleared by riot police and there were police everywhere.  I did not know what was going until I got on the then shuttle bus to  the Rental Car Center and people were talking on their cell phones.  I saw the first images when I got to the Avis counter.  I can remember driving down the 101 listening to the radio in shock.  I wanted to call my parents in Sydney, so I drove to my favorite cafe in Palo Alto, University Cafe on University Avenue.  I called my parents from the cafe, it was 2:00AM Sydney time.  I woke them up with the news.  To this day I am relieved that they were not aware what was going when I was in the air.

That week in Newark and Palo Alto was somber and I still have a little American Flag on my office wall that I picked up from a memorial service in Palo Alto later that week.    I can remember going to a collage football game at Stanford University the next weekend and standing for a minute silence and the national anthem. It was very moving.  I also remember American Flags everywhere, on cars, in shop fronts and even in the windows of the Sun Newark campus.

We all need to stop and remember today. 

University Cafe, Palo Alto