Nice write-up Charlie.

While I fundamentally agree that the quality of Mike's jam matters much more than the number of "segments" in the jam -- especially because the only practical difference between a long, single-segment Mike's jam and a "second jam"-containing Mike's is the brief resolution to the D > E > F#m chords before taking off again -- the appearance of the "second jam" in the improvised portions of the tune typically signal that we've gone way out into Type II space. In fact, many of the better two-jam-segment Mike's modulate again in the second jam, and when we've reached that space, anything can happen. But as you point out (or essentially prove with evidence to support it), there isn't a perfect correlation between the number of jam segments and the awesomeness of the Mike's. I have yet to see a truly awesome Mike's in person (if I weren't such an idiot I would have gone to 9/16/99 as my first show instead of only going to N2 Shoreline '99; though Shoreline N1 '03 had probably the best Mike's I've seen), so I'm hoping that this Fall we get one for the ages.