Time Flies

I was looking at Katiedids Blog today, and she has a nice "Today in History" script. Today's included the Olympic Park bombing in 1996. Nine years ago, I had finished my third year of college. Man, I'm older than I thought I'd be at this age.

Anyway, that event stands out to me because I was there. I had been at the Olympic Park the night before the bombing. I was working on the broadcast of the games, working some looong hot days. I learned of the bombing in a rather exciting way. I was staying at a friends house about 40 minutes from my venue (which happened to be swimming and diving), and had gone to bed as soon as I got home that night. Most days I worked about 18 hours, so I was exhausted after several days in a row. The next morning, I was driving back after a few short hours of sleep. As was and still is my habit, I was listening to a CD as I drove, instead of the radio. I still remember the CD. It was this one. I realized after a few minutes I hadn't heard any news for awhile, so I switched to the radio.

There was much discussion of a "bomb" of some kind. I thought they were talking about another country somewhere, and I wasn't that alarmed. It took me a little while to figure out that they were talking about a bomb in Atlanta! Literally seconds after the realization sank in, I passed a bus on the side of the freeway...in flames. I had a momentary panic of "what the heck is going on!??", certain that I'd awakened to a war zone. Everything was well though. It was an isolated incident, and Eric Rudolph will be sentenced next month for the bombing.

So that's what I was doing on "This Day in History".