On September 10, 2001 I got a plane and flew to New York City with the intention of going to a meeting in the World Trade Center at nine o'clock the next morning.  As it happened, I decided pretty much at the last minute that I didn't want to go to the meeting.  I had another meeting later in the day in midtown and I thought my time would be better spent preparing, especially since four of my colleagues were going to the World Trade Center and I was literally a fifth wheel.  So I passed.

The next day, I was sitting on an exercise cycle in my hotel in midtown Manhattan watching the television as first one plane and then another flew in to the building that we were supposed to be meeting in.  Not that day, and not the next day, but several months afterwards I began to reflect on why I made the decision not to go to a meeting at the World Trade Center on 9/11.  To this day I have no idea what it was that prompted me to do what I did.

It took the rest of that day to determine the fate of my four colleagues. They all made it; none of them actually entered the building before the planes hit.