1 Day In America, 4: It was at 7:46 am, my time, that the first plane hit. I was winding my way down in the parking garage. I always parked on the lower levels if I could. Not only were they protected from weather, but it meant that I walked UP the stairs in the morning when I was still full of energy, and then walked DOWN the stairs at the end of the day, when a whole day's work had drained a portion of my life away and I needed to take the path of least resistance. It was only a half-block from the parking garage to the office building, where my office at the time was on the second floor of a two-story building on Capitol Square in Madison. My window looked out on the back parking lot where I could see the hair stylists from the first-floor salon leaving. There was a small theater next to our building, one of those weird ones that puts on plays that nobody ever sees. Sometimes the actors would stand in the alley, in costume, smoking.