Tour updates and mini-golf

Hey folks!

We've gotten a lot accomplished this weekend - bought/reserved most of the gear we'll need for our tour, including a U-Haul trailer, started setting up stuff to get on iTunes (at long last!), ordering tour merch (shirts, bookmarks, posters), and we're still trying to book 7/27 and 7/28 in New Jersey and 8/2 and 8/3 in Virginia. We've sent out emails and calls to about seven billion places. Let us know if you know anywhere! We'd really like to fill those dates.

David is taking off for Jamaica later this week to teach little children music for ten days. Chris Jasinski is off to Virginia to begin his internship with NASA later this week as well. I'll be starting a bike trip of the Erie Canal with my girlfriend, Sydney, next Monday. So this week will be most of the finishing preparation for the first leg of tour.

We reached our Kickstarter fundraiser goal! Thank you all so much to everyone who donated. We'll still be accepting donations for another week, so consider donating if you haven't already. http://kck.st/iNOKYg

All of these things are wonderful and important, but none as exciting and important as...

THE JOLLY MINI-GOLF QUADRUPLE DATE.

Jeff approves of David dating his sister. We think.

A gripping, testy battle between man and woman, Beggar and Beggarette, and a true test of all of our relationships. From hole 1 to hole 18, Safari Golf brought us all to our knees with joy and frustration. Every misguided roll past the cup, every directionless ricochet off of the low, brick barriers, and every hop and skip over the not-quite-flat putting surface pushed our sanities to their limits. With nowhere else to go but forward, The Beggars and Significant Others persevered through the wild safari past giraffes, hippos, elephants, plant-eating tigers, and foamy watery depths with nothing but bent-out-of-whack putters, colored golf balls, and the instrumental at the end of "Lark in the Morning" stuck in our heads.

We all emerged, but not the same as when we had entered. We had all grown and left our child-like innocence behind in the safari of Meriden. To call us The Jolly Beggars after our experience is almost impossible - we are entirely different individuals, and therefore must form a different entity. What this new group is, we cannot yet say. Only time will solidify the impact of haunting, wild safari mini-golf experience.

I shot a 42 and won. Woo!

Crikey.

- G