Mark Schultz on the Joy FM Bike Ride for the Homeless

Today I went to the The JOY FM bike ride for the homeless! For two days, February 15 & 16, 2008 where they are riding from Brooksville to Bradenton to raise monies & awareness for the homeless. According to Metropolitan Ministries of Tampa, Hillsborough County ranks #1 in the state & #6 in the nation for homeless families. Families with children are the largest growing segment of the homeless population. Must be the lack of SNOW!! 74 & Sunny today. Perfect day to spend my day off from work at wonderful Clearwater Beach.

Best part of the day was Mark Schultz, my favorite Christian music artist was riding in the bike ride. I was lucky enough to get about 5 minutes of his time to talk as their vehicle and his bicycle was dropped off right next to my car! Lucky me! 5 minutes is huge because it's normally 30 seconds in the autographs lines after a concert.

Mark Schultz - San Antonio, Texas

Women of Faith Conference: February 7, 2008 San Antonio, Texas Mark Schultz played the first night for 30ish minutes. Shortest one I have ever been to out of my 11th time to see Mark, but it was a blast. I think Mark was nervous with thousands of women there. ;-) I was in row 14 on the floor, but snuck up to row 2 for the concert because many people had not arrived for the first night. I was on the floor behind the stage, the entertainers looked all around, but mostly spent the night looking at the back side of Mark. I’ve never been to such a large show of Mark’s, so many surprises like only 50 or so tickets were handed out to fans in line and I didn’t get there early enough. I hung around and got a chance to talk to Mark for just a sec. Then I heard he was doing it again at 10:30 in the morning and I was in line with a ticket in hand at 10:15 ;-) I had an opportunity to talk to Mark about my pic I brought for him to sign, I had a pic with several old pics from my past concerts. Then we talked about The Joy FM bike ride for the homeless Mark is riding the first day in. The whole time they were blaw blaw about no posed pictures, not this, no that. I had a great opportunity though. ;-) It’s always good to see Mark. This time there were people there who had never heard of Mark, so I took it as an opportunity to spread the word. ;-)

Women of Faith Conference Feb 7-9 2008

February 7-9, 2008 I had a blast in San Antonio, Texas at the Women of Faith conference in the Alamodome. The theme was “High Heels, High Hopes, High Calling” I origionally found it because Mark Schultz was singing and I really like going to his concerts. But, after this year, I’m sure I’ll be back to Women of Faith, no matter who the enterntainment is. I almost always travel alone, but this year with 15,000 or so women there, I had plenty of people to meet. The best ones were Angie and Sandy who I met on the airplane ride into San Antonio. They were sitting by me and we quickly became friends. Sandy drove me from the airport into town in her rental car. Yeah, I know we just met, but I could feel the instant friendship come across me when I met Sandy. I debated the hotel arrangements for a long time before settling on the cheaper hotel so that I could spend my money elsewhere, and the hotel turnend out great. It was clean, safe and downtown and a quick walk to the Alamodome. I went to the 3:16 Live event with Max Lucado. “For God so loved the World that He gave His one and only son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16” Michael W. Smith and others were the entertainment. One of the days Sandy and I were riding the city trolley, we didn’t know where it was going to take us and we met a whole trolley full of wonderful women. They took Sandy and I on as orphans and invited us to dinner with them for Tex-Mex in the Market Square. I think there was 30ish of them and I loved talking to them all. We ran into them later, which is odd because there were thousands of women around. I had the Mexician dinner and it was great. We barely made it back to the conference in time for the big event as no trolleys seemed to be coming for 30 minutes and then when one finally came, it was the long route going the wrong way. We arrived finally just in time. Not before meeting more fine friends on the trolley car, who I also ran into in the middle of thousands of people. Cool ladies that night. Every morning Kris and I walked from the hotel to the conference, so that was a blast to have a friend to walk with. Sandy drove me back to the hotel at night, so it wasn’t scary to walk back. After it was all over Sandy hit the Riverwalk downtown shopping area. Went on the riverboat cruise boat. Broke my camera on that boat. : ( To all the ladies that met me and want to contact me, you can do it at floridabound@gmail.com Feel free to save any of the pics from the conference. For more about Mark Schultz part of it, see my above posting.

South Dakota in January

What a blast I had in South Dakota! Literally an artic blast of cold air…. :-) Actually, I brought them 30-40 degree weather and kicked me on my butt on last day it was -27. See the tempurature in the mirror pics. I learned that I really liked slushy cold Coca-Cola for breakfast as I left a Coke in the car over night. If I was unable to see you on this very short trip back, I am sorry. It was filled to the gills. I’m writing this on the airplane ride home, and I can’t wait to get back to the ocean and the heat. 75 and sunny today. The trip became much better after finally actually making it to Sioux Falls, having to sleep in Cincinati Thursday night and loosing my luggage for 3 days. I arrived to work 10 minutes before the start of a meeting I was wanting to attend. It was great to see everybody at work. I would have liked to have spent more time with you but I had work to do. ;-) I was able to visit and stay with my friend Karen Friday night and enjoyed a great meal at Johnny Carinos. Saturday found me scrapbooking, shopping and getting ready for the Parrot Head party (the reason I came back to the artic tundra on my own dime!). It was great to get together with friends for supper at the Castaways Grill and then it was a super blast to be able to attend the 3rd annual Parrot Heads winter party! It looked like over 200 people in there. My visit was a true surprise. I think thhey want me to come back next year. I think I’ll surprise them by skipping a year. ;-) A good time was had by all. Since I went to bed at 3am it was nice to stay at the hotel. Sunday morning brought me 3 hours of sleep and early service at church. It was also great to get to visit with everybody on Sunday and I had a great steak dinner with my friends Sunday night. Monday was back to “work” and a fantastic time visiting friends all night, although stuffed from buffet at pizza ranch during lunch followed by dinner at Braco’s and a late but fantastic night of playing Wii with my friend. I don’t think I went to bed before 1am any night that I was in town. Tuesday morning brought me -27 degree wind chill artic air and I was happy to return the rental car and get out of town. My fingers still hurt from being cold as I type. See you guys next time in the “summer”. If I didn't get a chance to see you this trip, sorry. I didn't want to drive out of town much, so I mostly saw my city friends and went to work carefully.

New Years Eve Virginia

New Years eve was great. I came up with a last minute decision to drive across the eastern seaboard to go to Virginia to see my friend Sasha and her 6 kids. All my favorite kids in the world to be with! I had a blast with the kids, they wore me out of course, tickled me to death, but I imaginged to survive 6 on 1. ;-) It was a very long, long drive and I barely made it home. I was so tired from driving and there were some bad accidents I came across. Next time I’ll fly or take the Amtrak train…