Day 2 (Thurs Aug 2)

There's gotta be a record of you someplace
You gotta be on somebody's books
The lowdown - a picture of your face
Your injured looks
The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
And it's your face I'm looking for on every street
-Dire Straits

I took the train to NYC. From Penn Station I took the E line downtown to the WTC. There was nothing special about it; by all appearances from the subway you would assume that the WTC was still there.

I got off the subway at the same place I did back in December 2001. Then there was grey dust all over, wooden barricades guarded by New York's Finest, some who were trying to cheer up the clearly shocked and saddened folks who were there. The crater looked like the terrain of a foreign planet covered in a dirty snow. There were many people, many flowers, and the dust.

Today, if I didn't know where to go, I would have never found the site. There was much contruction work, but it is still just a hole surrounded by a chainlink fence with only a sign at the gate identifying the site. And the guys selling trinkets along the streets. I felt a little like Jesus at the temple with the moneychangers. New Yorkers were walking by as if it were nothing. There was no place for (is that what I am?) a tourist to take pictures. I took some poor pictures.

I was walking the streets of downtown Manhattan wearing a Tampa Bay Devils Rays hat. I got stares. There are millions of you folks. And I only saw five people smoking. In Florida we smoke like freight trains. Then again cigarettes aren't $300 a pack in Tampa.

I left my Rays hat on the train back.

Tomorrow the groomsmen pick up our tuxes and we have rehearsal @ the church followed by rehearsal dinner.