Where Were You? Never Forget.

I remember feeling exhausted and completed, full of wild blueberry pie, Maine lobster, and hope. I laughed as I passed a Wegman photo in the Portland airport—clicked a picture of it. The airport was full of Canada/US AIDS Vaccine riders and crew in black victory t-shirts.

I waited for my United flight to Dulles to take me back to San Francisco. I drank water trying to rehydrate after finishing something I thought impossible—completing all three AIDS vaccine rides, riding 1,600 miles in six weeks, raising almost $20,000 to fight an unthinkable disease changing our world, devastating a continent.

I was returning to uncertainty in San Francisco. While doing the Alaskan AIDS Vaccine three weeks earlier, I had lost my apartment due to a dishonest roommate taking my rent and not paying our landlords, who were friends. So I was returning to couch surfing on my friend Phoebe’s couch, a very generous offer considering I came as a package with my wonderful, co-dependent 90-pound Weimaraner.

I had a three-hour layover in Dulles before my SFO flight headed west. I talked and laughed with a woman named Holly who had also completed the ride. We talked about the disorienting, post-partum type effect of leaving a PTW event. Spending seven days with spectacular, kind, generous, compassionate people doing something hard, an event that created hope, changed the world.

Not only had I just gone through that experience three times in a month and a half, I was returning to no apartment, and the very real possibility that I would be being laid off from Pallotta TeamWorks as the company’s return of monies to beneficiary and integrity went south.

But even all those concerns couldn’t really ruffle my feel-good, post-event euphoria. I, who only five years earlier, never thought I would complete my first AIDS ride and raise the required $2,300, had just ridden 3 times as far as my longest ride, raising almost 10 times as much money. I had challenged my mental model of who I was and was truly beginning to understand the awesome and limitless potential of the human spirit.

I got into San Francisco around 11 pm that evening, picked up my dog, and headed to Phoebe’s to crash.
“Oh my God! It’s fucking crazy! Turn on the TV!” Michelle, Phoebe’s roommate, burst into the apartment and barked at us as Phoebe and I were chatting and waking up.

“The World Trade Center—gone! Pentagon- bombed! People jumping! It’s like we’re at war.”

For the next hours, days, weeks, we relived the horror of watching people jump, planes crash, the towers fall. America lost its innocence that day, the world changed forever.

For that next week, I had the task at work of tracking over 200 vaccine riders coming back to California, combing flight lists and internet sites for unaccounted participants.

As this huge catastrophic event unfolded, it could only be related to in Hollywood-like terms. “It was like ‘Independence Day’.” It was too unreal to be real.

But it was real.

As the days went on, friends started to know people who’d died. It got very close. I’d flown out of the two airports on the same airlines/same routes, just 8 hours ahead of the hijackers. The press image of Mohammed Atta in Portland airport security was just twelve hours after I’d gone through the same gates. It wasn’t my time. I flew to Dulles, 12 hours ahead of the Pentagon attack. Again, just ahead of history.

It did quickly become too close. My brother lost his best man, Dan, a great guy with a quick sense of humor who I’d seen at the Cape a few years earlier when his family vacationed with my brother and his family. He worked on floor 90-something of the one of the Towers. Two great kids—one five, the other three, were left without a father.

Amidst the unfathomable and senseless horror, beauty emerged. The world mourned. People pulled together. There was a tangible sense of oneness, how everyone had been affected. Compassion was the common feeling.

However the world has devolved since that time, that sense of compassion and unity must not be lost. We, as a people, are far more similar than we are different. This is to be celebrated, as are differences, as we are equally valid manifestations of God’s creative imaginings.

Celebrate our diversity. Embrace our Oneness. Open our minds and open our hearts. This is our charge. Cherish your friends and family and let them know. Grow to include everyone within this expansion of heart. It’s the calling to live from a place of love.

“Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, 
Mohammendans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it ‘jal’; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it ‘pani’. At a third the Christians call it ‘water’. Can we imagine that it is not ‘jal’, but only ‘pani’ or ‘water’? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him.” ~Sri Ramakrishna

“When the heart becomes empty, the mimbar of the Divine Oneness is placed therein and the sultan of gnosis sits upon it.” ~Ibn Ata'Allah
The Key To Salvation: A Sufi Manual of Invocation

“Does one scent appeal more than another? Do you prefer this flavor, or that feeling? Is your practice sacred and your work profane? Then your mind is separated: from itself, from oneness, from the Tao.” ~Lao Tzu

“We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flaunt the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule.” ~Martin Luther King Jr

“Love is all you need.” ~the Beatles


Namaste/Peace/Love/Laughter
Craig