Storytime

5:45 AM – Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari, two of the intended hijackers, pass through security at the Portland International Jetport in Maine. They board a commuter flight to Boston Logan International Airport, they then board American Airlines Flight 11.

7:59 AM – Flight 11 takes off from Boston, headed for Los Angeles, California. There are 76 passengers, 11 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:15 AM – United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston, also headed for Los Angeles. There are 51 passengers, 9 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:19 AM – A flight attendant on Flight 11, Betty Ann Ong, alerts ground personnel that a hijacking is underway and that the cockpit is unreachable.

8:20 AM – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles, outside of Washington, DC, headed for Los Angeles. There are 53 passengers, 6 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:24 AM – Mohamed Atta, a hijacker on Flight 11, unintentionally alerts air controllers in Boston to the attack. He meant to press the button that allowed him to talk to the passengers on his flight.

8:37 AM – After hearing the broadcast from Atta on Flight 11, Boston air traffic control alerts the US Air Force’s Northeast Defense Sector, who then mobilize the Air National Guard to follow the plane.

8:42 AM – United Flight 93 takes off from Newark, New Jersey, after a delay due to routine traffic. It was headed for San Francisco, California. There are 33 passengers, 7 crew members, and 4 hijackers are on board.

8:46 AM – Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. All passengers aboard are instantly killed, and employees of the WTC are trapped above the 91st floor.

9:03 AM – Flight 175 crashes into the WTC’s South Tower. All passengers aboard are killed instantly and so are an unknown number of people in the tower.

9:05 AM – President George W. Bush, in an elementary school classroom in Florida, is informed about the hit on the second tower. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispers the chilling news into the president’s ear. Bush later wrote about his response: “I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn’t want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm… I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing the leader has to do is to project calm.”

9:28 AM – Hijackers attack on Flight 93.

9:37 AM – Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. All passengers aboard are instantly killed and so are 125 civilian and military personnel in the building.

9:45 AM – US airspace is shut down under Operation Yellow Ribbon. All civilian aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport.

9:55 AM – Air Force One with President George W. Bush aboard takes off from Florida.

9:57 AM – Passengers aboard Flight 93 begin to run up toward the cockpit. Jarrah, the pilot, begins to roll the plane back and forth in an attempt to destabilize the revolt.

9:59 AM – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:02 AM – Flight 93 plows into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although its ultimate target is unknown, it was likely heading for either the White House or the US Capitol.

10:18 AM – President Bush authorizes any non-grounded planes to be shot down. At that time, all four hijacked planes had already crashed but the president’s team was operating under the impression that Flight 93 was still in the air.

10:28 AM – The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:53 AM – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld orders the US military to move to a higher state of alert, going to DEFCON 3.

11:45 AM – Air Force 1 lands at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana.

12:15 PM – Airspace in the United States is completely free of all commercial and private flights.

1:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Barksdale.

2:30 PM – Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City, visits the fallen Twin Towers of the World Trade Center at what becomes known as Ground Zero.

3:00 PM – Air Force 1 lands at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and President Bush is immediately taken to a secure bunker that is capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.

4:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Offutt and heads back toward Andrews Air Force base near Washington, DC.

5:30 PM – Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapses.

8:30 PM – President Bush addresses the nation.

Yeah, so we were out on the trail about four years back just doing some leafbooting, ya know, while things were crunchy and we were walking for maybe an hour or so when he tells me he has to take a piss, and I’m like, “Yeah, sure, bud. I’ll just sit tight right here”, as my own bladder sloshes around like a Christian's fishbowl, and so I see him walk out to a nice wide tree, ya know, one that can really take a blasting, and this tree isn’t far, so he pulls his dong out and I can see he’s bricked up, like fully bricked up because we had been at it all afternoon and his ol’ boy had been tucked in warm pants for a while so that fresh air must have woke him up—nothing weird, happens to everyone—and so as he’s peeling the bark off that sturdy, ancient, elm, a doe, a deer, swerves its head around the other side and, pal, it’s got a look in its eyes that I had not seen before and not seen since, and my buddy is frozen in place, paralyzed by a powerful piss, and that deer just waits patiently and watches, and I’m watching, and my buddy is watching, and as soon as his dong bobs up and down with those last few spurts, the deer wraps its mouth around his penis, and remember, my buddy is bricked up from the fresh air, and so this deer is latched on and just going to town on my guy over there, and it’s like porn-style sloppy with the gagging and slurping noises and strings of thick saliva, and my buddy doesn’t know what to do because, I mean c’mon, this is a delicate situation here, what with a wily cervid putting the juicy clamps and his cock and everything, so I’m scared, but I don’t want to get close to him because I know my own penis is just one flimsy zipper away from flopping out and going full mongrel, and the fellatey smell in the air was gonna assure that was gonna happen, and yeah, so my buddy is like trying to gently release the deer, but also just getting slob jobbed into oblivion, and just when he’s about give me a thumbs up and throw his hands on top of his head to let it ride—Snap!—she bites that thing clean off with all the juiciness of a freshly chargrilled bratwurst, and that deer with a mouthful of dong giddy-ups deep into the woods where we couldn’t possible be able to follow, and he’s stunned and I’m stunned and we’re both staring at his dick stump, and we’re both sorta impressed because that was a clean bite, like super clean, like it didn’t even start bleeding right away, and my theory is that this dick biting deer had bitten a dick before and she’ll bite a dick again, so suffice it to say, my buddy and I have not hiked that trail again without wearing steel panties like the ranger suggests.