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Wednesday, October 26, 2005 Arriving in New York Alex joined me at the Bowling Green show, and afterward we left (at 2:30am) to drive straight through to New York City. Neither of us slept that night, but we made good time and arrived at Ryan's apartment in Brooklyn in nine hours (including the inevitable half hour of being lost), better than Google's estimated 10. There were the usual moments of near-death speeding down a rainy highway--it rained most of the trip--and the not-so-usual moments of awe at the autumnal foliage. The mountains of Pennsylvania were beautiful, covered in rich shades of orange, red, green, and the trees were so full they seemed like colorful cotton balls. Me: It's like an Impressionist painting. Alex: God's an Impressionist. Who knew? Me: I knew I liked him. In the end, I didn't sleep that day at all, heading out for brunch with Ryan at a wonderful French café where I had the most incredible Eggs Benedict. (Alex took a nap on the floor of Ryan's room and we didn't see him again until the next night's show.) We wandered around the Village afterward and made it back to Brooklyn in time to navigate traffic to the Saturday night show in Allendale, NJ. Leena Gilbert joined me on violin that night; she used to go to church with me in Michigan, but about a month ago she moved to New York for music. She's an incredible improviser--actually we weren't able to practice before the show but she was able to jump in and it sounded wonderful; in particular, she definitely sells the jazz songs (so that masters in jazz does come in handy). We had a nice turnout and it was fun for me to play at Holy Grounds, where I'd spent many hours practicing with a band one summer. The café is decorated with sections for the countries that Touch the World, the organization that runs the coffeeshop, works in: Scotland, Africa, Japan, the US. At almost every show these days I improvise a song made from words provided by the audience; that night, I didn't have much to work with for humor--of the five words solicited, I got "savior," "Yeshua," and "God" before getting anything in the usual vein, like "Michigan." They were a fantastic audience, just not particularly great in terms of picking words. So later that night, after I almost fell asleep on the road, we picked up one of Ryan's friends who'd missed the concert and wanted to hear me play. Of course, something about that woke me up, and we spent the next few hours making up songs in Ryan's living room. They got progressively more outlandish--think Princess Bride-style duels and postmen who turn out to be fathers--until we finally crawled into bed. ^ Top | 8:37 PM | | | 
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