Where I was ...
by Mike Bianchi

 

Whap. Whap. Whap.

I cursed to myself.

Is there anything worse than the sound of a flat tire when you're running late?

It was Tuesday, and I was on my way to Gainesville for the weekly news conference with University of Florida football coach Steve Spurrier.

I pulled over to a discount-tire store in Winter Garden, bought a used tire and waited impatiently for the guy to put it on. That's when another customer asked me if I'd heard about the "plane running into the building in New York?" "No," I said. "What happened -- amateur pilot?" The man shrugged, unclear of the details. From the tire store, I phoned Sentinel colleague Joe Schad, our man in Gainesville who covers the Gators, to tell him I would probably be late.

"Are you watching this?" Joe said.

What?

"It's unbelievable."

What?

"Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center."

Little planes?

"No, man. Passenger jets."

It was the same sick feeling I got on a cold winter day in 1986 when I called my sister to see if she wanted to go to lunch. The first thing she said to me was, "The space shuttle just blew up."

The Challenger disaster was traumatic, but it didn't change my life in any significant way. This one will.

A frequent flier, I will never get on a plane again without envisioning the horrendous possibilities. I will never go to a Super Bowl again without wondering whether some lurking lunatic has planned the ultimate act of terror against our ultimate sporting symbol. I will never look at a skyscraper again without thinking of a plane flying into the side of it.

And I damn sure won't ever curse a flat tire again.

 

*Mike Bianchi is an award winning sports columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.