My commute to work on the Brooklyn waterfront requires me to drive under 3 of the 4 East River bridges. The threats to them caused insurmountable traffic jams as the row after row of cargo trucks & vans were stopped & searched by military & police.

To get around this, I tried taking the subway into Manhattan & down to the southern tip of the island, just a few blocks from the attack site, where I could catch a commuter ferry back out to the Brooklyn pier in front of my workplace.

The area of Battery Park, near the ferry, was filled with Army vehicles and heavily equipped soldiers . They were strapped with knapsacks & machine guns and didn't look any older than teenagers.

A short time later, I stood on the back end of the ferry with a young cop was we both watched the altered skyline of lower Manhattan recede into the distance. We talked briefly about the attack and more about the still present threats. The talk was pretty quickly reduced to both of us staring at our feet, shaking our heads & uttering in unison "... we're fucked."

Eventually the truck searches became more sporadic, and traffic began to flow more easily along the Brooklyn waterfront. But with my Toyota surrounded each morning by a crowd of large trucks & vans, as I slowly drove along the BQE under the Brooklyn Bridge, it was impossible to look at any of them and not imagine an explosion.