There I was, minding my own business in my room at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton, when the place started to shake. It was a Sunday, right around 5 p.m. The lamp at the desk where I was working rattled, and I felt the building sway a bit.
I’d been in a minor earthquake in Chicago back in 1985 (on an elevated train platform, no less), but with this one, I wondered if it was “the big one” everyone expects to happen one day. But things settled down quickly, and when I turned on the television, I learned that it was “only” a 4.2, centered near the La Brea tar pits, and had done no damage. Life in the area… including flights into and out of LAX… hadn’t missed a beat. That meant the business trip I was on would continue without missing a beat as well. A colleague would fly in next morning, we’d make calls on a couple of advertisers, including dinner in Malibu with a couple who had become friends as well as advertisers, then my colleague and I would drive to San Diego for a business meeting on Tuesday morning, the 11th. That afternoon, I would fly home to Cincinnati, and she would fly to the San Jose area for another advertiser appointment.
I called my husband to let him know I was all right. The earthquake had been so minor that he, an inveterate newshound, hadn’t heard anything about it. I laughed. “Well,” I said, “at least something memorable happened while I was here.”
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