One evening around five while I was sitting on the front porch reading, two fire engines, a EMT vehicle and a sheriff’s car roared past headed for the beach. I hoped no one had drowned.

Two days later my neighbor told me that a small plane had crashed in the dune grass along the shore of Lake Michigan just north of the state park two days prior about five p.m.

The pilot survived. Apparently, he had flown over the heads of the bathers at the park. The neighbor said the plane ran out of gas and that it made national news.

He wondered where I had been that I didn’t know anything about the now famous plane crash. I couldn’t answer him. Reading maybe?

A day later, my wife and I went to the beach taking the chocolate lab, who’s always up for a walk. My wife wanted to take some photos of the crash scene.

The single engine, single seat plane had done a face plant in the sand. It looked like a giant silver seagull had missed the water and made a bad landing while diving for fish.

I thought about how the pilot could have crashed into bathers. I was glad no one had died. He was probably some kind of hero.

I thought about Harrison Ford’s plane crash and how he had wonderfully navigated the little plane to a landing without crashing into a densely populated neighborhood.

I told my wife that I hadn’t heard anything about Ford for months and I wondered how he was. My wife said that he’s back up in the sky flying a helicopter.

Then she asked me where I had been all this time. I guess I need to keep better track of where I am so when people ask me where I have been, I can tell them.

I know where I was when the fire engines, the EMT vehicle and the sheriff’s car roared past, but nobody’s asking me that.

I think I’ll go tell the neighbor that I know where I was when that happened.