#16: "passionate about tottenham"

It was only a matter of time before I got to this.

The year was 2006. I was living in Richmond, mired in a job that I was growing complacent in, staring 30 down and wondering what I could do in the short term to change things up. I took a long weekend trip to Delaware (I almost spelled that Deleware, and for those that know this topic you are giggling right now).

I was visiting my friend Holly who is originally from slower lower, more specifically the Rehoboth Beach area. It was summertime at the beach, we were there for the 4th of July. Every bar we went to was playing the World Cup.

Quite honestly to this point I hadn't been in to any sport that wasn't baseball. I've never liked the NFL or the NBA, and while I enjoy hockey I'd never lived close enough to it to be able to go see it. I believe that being able to see sports live will cement your love for that sport. I believe this because of a little trip I took in September of 2013.

It was my first international trip. It was not my first match - I did live down the street from DC United for a year - but it was my first match in England. I'd seen the club in the United States when they played some friendlies here... That was the weekend where I had too much to drink in one state and woke up in the back of a van in another state... But that's not the point of this letter.

People often say that you don't choose your club, the club chooses you. There is something in each of us that helps draw us to something bigger than we are, a camaraderie and a feeling of belonging. It's in the history. It's in the current players. It's in the legends. It's in hearing things like "This is my club, my one and only club" or "It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low. And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory" or " The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish." It's about hearing the songs ring around the stadium. It's about meeting people from all over the world and instantly having a connection with them, one that you know will make you fast friends and always give you something to talk about.

By the time you're all getting this I'll likely have landed in London. It's time for one last pilgrimage. We're getting a new stadium, so this is the swan song year for White Hart Lane. We all have to make one more trip back. We all want to be in that number.