NYC 2005 Recap

Alrighty... for many of you, this might be the first time you've seen this blog, or seen it in a really long time, because someone forwarded this address to you and said "(fill in name here) is going to NYC, and David Dollar, who is going with them, will be blogging every day, so read the info here..." (or some of you may have gotten my email with the info in it...)

So to you, I say "Welcome" or at least, "Welcome Back!"

You can read some about the 2006 trip (commencing in about, oh, 36 hours) towards the end of the post... but first, I thought I'd recap the 2005 NYC Trip... well, actually, I'm going to give you the links, and you can read for yourself about the trip...

Disclaimer... I was typing on the hotel's computer, which charged $5 per hour to use... it was one of those old machines that if you type too fast, the cursor would stay still until about 10 seconds after you typed, then all your words would appear at once, half mistakenly spelled, so you'd have to backtrack and fix things (and the half-naked hairy foreign chick kept creeping me out). You have to understand... I hate messing up on spelling... I mean, I'm a guy who once ruled out going out with Kristi Tapp in 1999 because she couldn't spell worth crap on her emails... oh, and she used the words "tee-hee"... she might as well have been a Democrat.

Anyway, I say all that to say, when you read the postings, please don't think I'm that grammatically incorrect... it's important to me that you know this. Yes, I'm a dork.

NYC Entry #1: The Cast. Simply who's who and what's what about the trip, where we'll be going, what we'll be doing.

NYC Entry #2: The Prayers. Prayer requests and such, things that were on my heart and the team's heart right before the trip.

NYC Entry #3: The Journey. Leaving Birmingham, arriving in NYC, some info about Stamford, and the Jamaican Preacha Man.

NYC Entry #4: Albert, Basketball and a Naked Frenchman. The heat, meeting Kendall, Crotona Park, Albert's chicken and yes, a naked French man roaming the halls of our hotel.

NYC Entry #5: The Gospel of Matthew Modine. Upward Basketball, Yaniel, the ice cream guy (Leche?), PS 63, Jimmy and a Kettle of Fish.

NYC Entry #6: Lots of Things to Caulk About. The heat, the shower-tub, $.50 water, Jason, The Infernal Steps, Caulking Tim and Carnagie's Deli.

NYC Entry #7: Cyclone Salvation and My Favorite Valentine. The heat, the foreign chick, Jordan, Jimmy & the asbestos room, Nathan's Famous with Natalie, Coney Island and... (I'm tearing up)... riding the Cyclone for the first time.

NYC Entry #8: Fluid. The heat, Coach of the World Ray's Uncle, Be My Glory, the murdered cab driver, the ESPNZone, the shirt, Josh's bathroom tv watching, praying with Ed and Tamika and Nikki blow us away.

NYC Entry #9: The Bling of Jesus. The heat, Belgian Waffles at the West Way cafe, Ground Zero, Tim's bling, bootleg DVDs, Chinatown, Crotona Park's block party, salvation and "guess where the ball is"

NYC Entry #10: Finality. Packing up and leaving the hotel, meeting the Drunk Irish Guys at 5am and Mark swears he sees Jake Gyllenhaal sighting,

NYC Entry #11: Reflections of a Memory Bliss. Written on my 30th birthday, its some final thoughts about NYC, some "awards" and mad props, some best-ofs, and my favorite story about Larry Long.

This year's trip... We'll be flying out of Birmingham, AL, on Saturday morning, on a plane straight to La Guardia airport, arriving late Saturday morning. From Saturday, to the following Sunday, we'll be doing Upward Basketball in the parks of The Bronx in the morning time, and VBS with the more affluent neighborhoods across the state line in Stamford, Connecticut.

Each night, I'm going to do my best to recap the day's events, give you some prayer requests, perhaps some funny stories or anything like that... whats different this year, however, is that you can comment... last year, you had to have an ID or password, but this time, anyone can comment on anything. Just click on the link at the bottom of each day's posting, and you can read all about it.

Alright, so thats what I have to say... talk to you when I'm in Stamford!