It would be easy to say that the tie which binds me to Reston is that I have two grown kids living there.
Yet I know in my mind that it is really the memories of working in Reston that keep it alive.
I had some really good years working in Reston. I was part of a well known company, Apple, even if few people knew that Apple had an office there.
Still only time has erased the challenges of driving up from Roanoke three times a month for far too many years, and the last couple of year when I worked for a couple deranged vps.
For many years I stayed in hotels in the Reston area. Finally when my daughter got a townhouse, she kindly got one big enough for me to have an office/bedroom. It made my time in Reston a relative pleasure.
I got to see my kids, and I didn't have to sleep in a hotel bed and fight with the air conditioning every night.
I could even leave clothes in Reston. I am sure my daughter will say that it is time for me to clean out my closet since it has been three years since I left Apple and two years since I stopped consulting in the area.
My time in Reston made 9/11 a much more poignant memory. While I was in Roanoke on 9/11 because it is also my wife's birthday, I had people who were working for me at the Pentagon and the Ronald Regan building when it happened. I was actually talking to someone in DC when the planes hit the World Trade Center.
The human memory has a great filter, it lets us remember the good times and slowly push the bad times to the back.
Right now Reston memories are the good times, and I haven't had to do any real rewriting of history.
On another note, down on the NC coast, we did survive Gabrielle.
