Is This How The World Ends?

, Is This How The World Ends?

That’s what I remember thinking as the non-stop roar in the skies above Washington, DC reached ominous levels…

I’ve never experienced anything like this before – and I don’t ever want to again.

American Craft Beer’s office is in downtown DC and I’ve lived in this city for some time now. It’s a beautiful place with so much to offer. It’s also unfortunately a target for random madmen and those who hate us.

I was here for 9/11 and the anthrax attacks that shut down the city’s mail system later that month. I was here for the Beltway Sniper when people were being randomly shot all over the DC area. Things like that happen here and it’s no surprise why. American power is concentrated in Washington, DC, and for that reason alone, residents live with quiet reality that DC will always be a target city for someone – and that the unexpected can happen here.

Which brings me to what happened over the weekend…

I was walking with my dog on Saturday afternoon in Rock Creek Park. Some of you might know that Rock Creek is a broad tract of wooded parkland surrounded by the city that in some places is so deep and dense that I can sometimes walk for hours and never see another human being.

And I was way off-path when I first noticed the sound of what I assumed were jets in the distance.

At first, the incoming sound barely registered as anything. Reagan National Airport is close and it’s not uncommon for commercial planes to taxi in over parts of the city. But this didn’t sound like any commercial plane that I was familiar with and whatever it was, it was coming in fast.

My next rationale was that maybe this was some sort of military exercise. The Capital, The Mall, and the White House are all restricted air spaces. Maybe someone was doing a dry run to make sure that everything’s kosher…But the sound of the incoming jets (if that’s what they were) was becoming increasingly concerning. I’d never heard jets approach DC this fast, this low and this loud – not even in the days that followed 9/11.

My dog was now cowering at my side and the roar above Washington was so loud that the woods actually seemed to be shaking…That’s when I started wondering what incoming rockets sound like – and I quickly went from WHAT THE FUCK to OH MY GOD.

Because I was under a heavy tree canopy, I couldn’t see what was happening in the sky above but the roar had been going on non-stop for at least 15 minutes and the sound was now almost deafening. Clearly something was very wrong.

That’s when I made a meager attempt at prayer – it was shit attempt – but I did it.

Five minutes later, things thankfully began to wane and I moved back from worry to “what just happened?”

Later reports confirmed that a private plane had wandered into restricted airspace – that the military had countered with a Code Red action – and that the Capital Building had even been evacuated.

I met up with friends for beer later that day and like most Washingtonians, they had already put the afternoon’s scare behind them. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Sometimes life reminds you that it has its own agenda. And that agenda may have nothing to do with you or craft beer, or whatever…

It turns out that Saturday wasn’t the end of the world after all – but I was reminded that it could have been.

And there’s a lesson in there somwehere, about how I should be living my life, but like everthing, it will soon be forgotten…

Now back to American Craft Beer…

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