A Burning Man 305
Maye on the front page included a story about what age is
too old to give birth.^76
In 2001, Maye lived in New York, and so did Elon’s
brother Kimbal, who had moved there after Zip2 was sold.
One day in September, Justine woke up when she heard
Elon yelling in the phone. “No shit,” he shouted. “You’re
kidding me. You’re fucking kidding me.” He went down to
his computer and checked the news. “Wake up,” he shouted
to Justine. “You have to wake up. The World Trade Tower’s
on fire. It’s on fire.” Elon was worried since both his brother
and mother lived in New York. Kimbal lived only a few
blocks away from the burning buildings.^161
“I was blocks away when the towers fell, and you just
can’t imagine what it was like to see the pile of melted
metal,” Kimbal said. He had together with his girlfriend
early decided to retreat to their friend’s apartment. Kimbal
stepped up as a volunteer. “I helped feed the firefighters for
six weeks. I was a recent graduate of the French Culinary
Institute and they had me peeling potatoes for a week,”
Kimbal said.^87
An earthquake devastated the island of Haiti in 2010.
To help the poor country, the head of the Artists for Peace
and Justice, Bryn Mooser, decided that the organization
should build a school and start a baseball team. With him,
he wanted to bring Elon to see if he could apply some of
his knowledge to help the country. “I want inventors to go
down to Haiti. I want geniuses to go down to Haiti,” Mooser
said.
“I’ll take you any day you want to go,” he told Elon.