The site roared twenty-four hours a day for nine full months and beyond. From autumn through winter and into spring the crews labored in twelve-hour shifts, got some sleep, and came back for more. The enormous scale of their workplace is difficult to convey.

We can all count to nine, and at best we may be at four in two months.

I'll bask in it a little bit. Twenty-four hours at most. Then I'll go back to looking over our future opponents, seeing if we can get an edge.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years

...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.