i remember that night well ariel. now i have a new hug story to tell:

the other night i went to a string cheese incident show, and ran into my japanese friend gen kojima. bill and i met him in vancouver at a show a couple of years ago, and since that time he has been travelling around the us and canada attending miscilaneous jam band shows. i remember when i first met him that i would try to hug him like i did everyone else, but he was very reticent, and didn’t take to well to it. i attributed that to his culture, since he had just arrived from japan, and i think it might be less common there to hug near strangers. i stopped giving him hugs so that i would not offend him. anyway, when i saw him the other night, he ran up and gave me a great big hug, and i realized that his aversion to hugs had disappeared. i guess two years on the road with hippies is a surefire way to cure huglessness!