Boston, it’s been a while.

Today is slated to mark my first return to the city I lovingly call The Beans since a 2006 trip to compete with Emily in the Boston University tournament four years after our graduation. Wouldn’t you know that this weekend will be my first return to APDA-style competition as well? I guess I’m not allowed in Boston unless I’m going to debate.

The Harvard tournament never traditionally smiled on me much in my four-year tenure, though Zirkin’s and my trip to semifinals in 2000 would have been fine had we not run into perhaps the least enjoyable case I ever hit in my life in said round. Other visits included missing Saturday by oversleeping in ’98, getting tanked by a capricious judge all the way to being the bottom 4-1 in ’99, and visiting the 1-2 bracket in ’01. Remarkably, it’s not expected to rain the whole weekend, which may be a first not only in my experience of the Big H’s tourney, but in its entire history.

Here’s hoping that Harvard goes better all around for my young charges from another big red letter, the R. And it wouldn’t hurt for Jake Campbell (BU ’10) and I to have a little luck on Sunday too. For details on the competition, you can read this.