I was a senior in high school at the time living in Monterey, California. I remember waking up hearing the TV on that morning, which was very weird, because the TV was never on in the morning in my house. I immediately knew something was wrong and a few seconds after I started watching the live feed of the first tower burning, the second plane hit the second tower. A short while later, when I was walking to school, a shitload of black humvees went flying down the road towards the airport, leaving from the Naval Postgraduate School which was one block from my house. I later found out that most of the leading intelligence people in the country were in town for a meeting on terrorism. We had planes flying out of town all day which was freaking everyone out, as people were scared that more attacks might happen.

I remember my uncle trying to call NY too make sure everyone in our family was alright (my cousin is a NYC cop) and not being able to get through because the lines were jammed. Also, my girlfriend at the time was freaking out because her dad was a Navy officer who was at the Pentagon on 9/11 for a meeting. She later found out he was on the other side of the building when the plane hit there.

That evening, my uncle's friend was at the house and they were talking about what had happened. His friend's brother showed up and was explaining what he thought, about Bin Laden and the Afghans, all sorts of stuff I had no idea about at the time. I found out a coupe of years later that the brother of my uncle's friend was Leon Panetta, who was the chief of staff for President Clinton and the CIA director and now Secretary of Defense under President Obama. He had an institute that he ran out of Monterey.

Monterey is sort of a military town(Defense Language Institute, Naval Postgraduate School), so it was pretty crazy there for a bit.