HARKATHON: 2010

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SUMMER READING

"...in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's forest jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through...for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into her peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
...But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing - straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"
(from Moby Dick, included in The Black Veil by Rick Moody)

AKA, as our American friend and tour manager Ben would say, "Tour not bore!"
Or, in more testing times, "Don't you know tour is short for terror?"

(Ben, pictured below on arriving in Seattle after a 15 hour drive).