Thunder Dog - Michael Hingson [4]
While I’d shaved, showered, and dressed, Roselle had continued sleeping on her blanket next to the bed. She’s probably still worn out from dealing with the thunderstorm. I let her sleep as long as I could. When it was time to go downstairs and eat, Roselle tracked my movements as usual, running ahead of me down the hallway and then downstairs to the kitchen. Since we did not have a fenced-in yard, I first took her outside on leash to relieve herself then came back in and turned on the TV. While I started in on a bowl of Special K, I listened to the news. My mind was on the morning meetings, but in the background I heard reports on the primaries; by the end of the day we’d know who was going to replace Mayor Giuliani. I got up and let Roselle back in. She grabbed her favorite Nylabone and played quietly while I finished breakfast.
A few minutes before six, I called Roselle and buckled up her harness. She has a pixielike personality, energetic and fun loving. She plays whenever she can and works when she has to. But the leather guide dog harness is like Roselle’s uniform; when she wears it, her behavior changes. She becomes less bouncy, more focused, and she always takes her job seriously. She demands that I do my job too. And she loves being part of a team.
Charlie, the owner of Happy Fox Taxi, picked us up for the ten-minute cab ride to the New Jersey Transit station. We waited at the station for the 6:18 train, but the public address system announcement said the train would be fifteen minutes late. This was a surprisingly rare occurrence, especially disappointing on a day I had planned to arrive early in New York. After two more announcements of additional delays, the train finally arrived. The train was stuffed full of passengers, all equally annoyed, and our arrival at the Newark station couldn’t happen too soon.
In Newark we immediately caught a PATH train headed for the World Trade Center. PATH stands for Port Authority Trans-Hudson and provides rail service between New York City and New Jersey. The tracks cross the Hudson River through century-old cast iron tubes that rest on the river bottom under a thin layer of silt and then continue through tunnels under the streets of Manhattan. We got off the train at the World Trade Center PATH station, which connected to the World Trade Center towers via an underground concourse and shopping station. The concourse connected the Twin Towers and was like a city, always bustling with people hurrying to work or going in and out of the restaurants, bars, and shops. We took our usual route through the underground parking lot on the fourth sublevel to an elevator that took us to the lobby of the North Tower, also known as Tower 1. The electronic security unit scanned my ID card, then Roselle and I entered the elevator.
I loved working in the World Trade Center. The Twin Towers dominated the building complex, made up of seven buildings and a concourse on sixteen acres of land. The last building in the project was completed in 1973. For one year, Towers 1 and 2 were the tallest buildings in the world. Each tower rose 1,353 feet and had 110 stories and 21,800 windows. Building components included 200,000 tons of steel, 425,000 cubic yards of concrete, and 600,000 square feet of glass window area. Together the two towers weighed 1.5 million tons. New Yorkers loved to brag that the World Trade Center even had its own zip code.
Roselle and I got off the elevator at the 78th floor. I unlocked the door to 7827, the office suite for Quantum/ATL, a Fortune 500 company that provided data protection and network storage systems. I served as the regional sales manager and head of operations in New York.
Our office suite consisted of four large rooms, side by side, measuring twenty-seven feet from hallway to the window wall overlooking southwest New York City. First was a small reception area. Beyond that were some tables and the ATL P-3000, our massive tape backup system;