Todd Bosma is the Assistant Director of Game Operations for the Portland Trail Blazers. Todd is letting Blazers fans take a peek into the BCB New York trip through his personal journal entries.

November 11, 2001 - 8:00 am PST
November 11, 2001 - 10:30 pm EST
November 12, 2001 - 8:00 am EST
November 13, 2001 - 9:45am EST
November 13, 2001 - 5:45pm EST
November 14, 2001 - 8:45am EST

Sunday – November 11, 2001

10:30pm (EST)

Well, we landed and the trip was very uneventful. Both planes (we connected in Cincinnati) weren’t full, so we actually had ROOM in the plane; it was quite a pleasant surprise.

We had time to check in to our hotel and then it was off to meet up for dinner. We walked a block or two and ate at The City Grill – it was a nice place with good food, and we had the back room to ourselves. It was a great time to relax and unwind from a day of traveling. The best part of the evening was meeting our guide for our time here in the city – Billy Quick.

Billy is a New York Fireman, Mountaineer and light beer drinker (or at least this is how he introduces himself). Billy is a great individual who is full of life and is an absolute joy to be around. Billy was on vacation on September 11th, but when he heard of the World Trade Center Disaster he put his kids on the bus to school and headed down to ground zero to help. While he was getting people out of the buildings, he injured his knee and is in rehab now – so he is able to be our tour guide while we are here. While Billy isn’t currently on active duty, we will definitely put him to good use!

At around 9:00pm, Billy mentioned something that really made me think about the kind of life NY Firefighters have. He had mentioned that since 6:00pm that night, there had been four fires. One of those fires was a four alarm fire - which meant that there were 125 firefighters there battling the blaze. Four fires in three hours. I know that New York is a big city, but those fires seem are a bit to frequent for my liking. We toasted the firefighters who lost their lives on September 11th, and then got down to the business of getting to know one another. Billy had more stories, too many to mention here, but I’ll try to get as many of them down as possible.

After dinner we went to do some quick sight seeing, but cut that short because it's beginning to look like tonight is the only night we will be able to get some sleep. We wish everyone well out west and will write more tomorrow.