I’ll start with the lesson that I learned: Always make sure your license plate matches your registration and insurance forms that you keep in your car and that these are the same as the information the DMV has in their database.

Here’s the story.  I was driving home last night around 10:30pm on the road to Eldorado Canyon.  I drive this road hundreds of times a year and have trouble staying at the speed limit, especially when it’s late, no one is out, and I’m in a mellow happy mood.  I was listening to the XM Chill station (my favorite radio station) and reflecting on the day. 

As occasionally happens, I noticed flashing red and blue lights in my rear view mirror.  After the initial exclamation of “fuck” and a brief adrenaline rush, I slowed to a stop and pulled over to the side of the road.  As I sat in my Range Rover, I pondered how excruciatingly bright the policeman’s floodlights were. 

The policeman marched up to my car.  As I’ve been through this drill before I handed him my drivers license, registration, and insurance form.  He asked if I knew why he had pulled me over.  I suppressed the sarcastic thought that immediately rolled through my head and said “I imagine I was going too fast.”  He asked if I knew how fast I was going.  I replied “I have no idea.”  He asked me where I was going.  I responded “home – I live about three miles from here.”  He asked if there was anything he should know. I pondered this for a second and said, “No.  I’m just heading home from dinner.  I didn’t have anything to drink if that’s what you are asking.” (I hadn’t).  He took this in stride and said “Just checking – I clocked you going 63 in a 45.”  In an effort to be cute, cuddly, and charming, I replied “I have no excuse for that – I just wasn’t paying attention.”

He took my documents and went back to his car.  Fifteen minutes later I was wondering what he was working on when he came out of his car and approached mine very purposefully.  He asked, “Is this your car.”  I responded, “Yes?”  He said, “The license plate is registered to a 1990 Blue Ford Pickup truck.  Do you own one of those?”  My first response was going to be no, but then I realized we do own a 1990-ish Blue Ford Pickup truck that we use to plow our road (I never drive it because Amy doesn’t allow me to plow.)  I explained this to the officer.  He then asked, very directly, “Are you sure.” 

At this point, I was really perplexed.  I looked him directly in the eye (there hadn’t been much eye contact up to this point because the flashlight he was shining in my face was excessively bright) and said “Yes.  I’d be happy to call my wife Amy who is at our house to confirm.”  He noticeably relaxed and said, “Ok – let me tell you what’s going on.”

He started by explaining that in most situations at this point I’d be in the back of his police car handcuffed on my way to jail after having a gun drawn on me and told to get out of the car and put my hands on my head.  He saw the shocked look on my face and told me not to worry – that he’d decided the car I was in wasn’t stolen based on the documentation and my answers to his questions.  Apparently the license plate on my car was for a 1990 Blue Ford Pickup.  And while the registration number for the Range Rover had a similar license plate, it was off by one letter.  Luckily, both cars were registered to Amy (my wife) instead of me and my drivers license had the same address on it. 

He said when he first brought up the DMV data, he almost arrested me since my “1990 Blue Ford Pickup” had turned into a “2007 Black Range Rover” which is a normal type of stolen car scenario.  The only thing that stopped him from doing this was that he noticed my address was Eldorado Springs, which matched the small town in which he had pulled me over.  Since this didn’t match the stolen car scenario, he dug deeper (hence the 15 minutes) and ultimately decided that I probably hadn’t stolen the car, but instead either had the wrong license plate on it or the DMV had made an error.  Apparently I answered his questions consistently enough that he was comfortable that I wasn’t a car thief.

By this point he wanted to make sure he explained the problem clearly enough so he escorted me to his car and showed me the DMV record he had pulled up.  I wasn’t processing much of what he was saying at this point since I was just happy to get whatever ticket he was going to give me.  I also realized Amy was probably getting worried since I was now at least 30 minutes later than I said I would be so when I got back to my car I sent her a quick email.

A few minutes later my new friend the policeman came by with a ticket (yes – after all that – he gave me a ticket.)  He was almost apologetic about the ticket at this point, but said he felt compelled to give it to me since I was speeding.  Being in no mood to argue, I thanked him for the ticket and also thanked him for doing the extra bit of research that kept me out of jail.

Not surprisingly, it took me a while to fall asleep when I finally got home.  This morning we are trying to figure out if it’s a license plate error or a DMV error (it appears to be a DMV error.)  Hopefully I don’t have to visit a special part of hell to get this resolved.

The DailyBurn Fitness Challenge started today.  For those of you that don’t know DailyBurn, it’s one of the TechStars Boulder 2008 companies (it used to be called Gyminee).  More on the fitness challenge from Andy Smith, the CEO.

This morning I weighed in at an uncomfortably high weight (fuck, fuck, fuck) – not quite as high as my jihad inspiring weight – but uncomfortable.  I refuse to be over 200 pounds on the anniversary of my jihad on my weight (10/27).  So, I’m going to get religious about using DailyBurn.

Fortunately for me, the DailyBurn iPhone app was released today.  This was one of the things holding up my extreme discipline to using DailyBurn and used to provide me with another excuse not to log my food (as in, “well, there’s no DailyBurn iPhone app so I forgot to log my food.)  Busted.

Come join the DailyBurn Fitness Challenge and encourage me.  I’m bfeld.  Begone weight, begone!

They seem to be having a very nice day.

Good thing the coyote didn’t catch them.

Some mornings I come across a blog post from a friend that breaks my mind – in a good way.  Today’s post from Todd Vernon titled My 100 year hobby was one such post.  Look at the picture below.

The picture on the left is Central City, Colorado from around 100 years ago.  The picture on the right is it from last weekend.  Todd describes how he put the shot together and makes a few observations about Central City, Blackhawk, and the Colorado Central Railroad.  He even manages to weave a reference to the Internet into his post, along with some comments on trees (note the absence of them on the left on the hill in the background.)

I run a lot in the mountains around Boulder and I live in a canyon that has been around for a very long time.  I’ve seen plenty of old pictures – it’s fascinating to me to juxtapose them with current pictures.  It’s just the other side of the augmented reality coin.

Oh – did anyone notice the M&A and IPO markets seem to be back?  It suddenly feels a lot like 2006 / 2007 in the tech world.  At least for this week.

I love the blog 3 Quarks Daily.  The best part is that I don’t have to read it – Amy obsesses over it and sends me all the stuff she knows I’ll like (at least a half dozen a week – sometimes a lot more).  Today’s (actually from March 30th) is a magnificent work of art by Helmut Smits tilted Dead Pixel in Google Earth 2009.

Absolutely fucking brilliant. 

Amy and I are huge fans and collectors of Rick Dula.  We’ve got a number of pieces of his art of the construction of the new Denver Art Museum hanging in my office at Foundry Group that we bought from the William Havu Gallery in Denver.

Our anniversary was June 21st and neither of us managed to get the other one a gift.  So – on June 21st we went trolling around the web for a piece of art to buy.  We each bought one and then decided to buy two more for our life dinner gifts on July 1st.  The two that we bought on our anniversary were Rick Dula’s – the first is R.I.P. Rocky Mountain News Building.

My world is all about innovation.  In the mid 1990’s, as the commercial Internet started to emerge and the World Wide Web became something that people both knew about and used, it seemed like the traditional newspaper (and traditional newspaper business) wasn’t long for the world.  While it took fifteen or so years for the real end game to emerge, I’ll definitely hang this one in my office as a reminder of how creative destruction works.

The other Dula that we decided to buy was D.A.M. Building Progress. 

This one is a big one – 41.5” x 55” – so we aren’t yet sure where it’s going to go.  Since we love to support local living artists, we’ll definitely try to find a spot for this other than “storage.”

As my endless effort to become skinnier continues, I carefully read Ian Rogers post “…look at me I’m skinny…” Diet, exercise, nature, and nurture.  I’ve enjoyed getting to know Ian through our investment in Topspin and have had several significant substantial meals with him.  Little did I know that I was actually doing all the eating (well, I did, I was just in denial.)

Ian’s post is dynamite.  If you struggle to keep the pounds off, run (don’t walk) over to FistFulaYen, toss your Coca-Cola down the drain, and read “…look at me I’m skinny…”

As I whittle away a little bit of weight each week, I just keep telling myself “eat less, exercise more.”  As my weekly running mileage continues to creep up (I’m now steadily adding 10%+ / week to my base) it gets a little easier, but all it takes is one double large dinner and an extra big bowl of ice cream to completely wipe out the progress.

Ah, that tuna burger and truffle fries at Larkburger sure was nice today.  I guess that’s it for the week.  Thanks Ian for sharing what works for you.

I was pondering what a tiny part of the universe we are on my ride this morning into Boulder from Keystone.  The first hour of my drive was extraordinary as the sun came up over the Rocky Mountains and I cruised down I-70 at a high rate of speed in the bat mobile.

I had another reminder of this as I cruised through my Daily folder.  The Astronomy Picture of the Day has been delighting me every day since I started looking at it a few weeks ago.  Today’s is a movie of Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft’s last moments.

Kaguya crashed into the Moon last week as planned.  Amazing.  We are small.

The web (and the universe) is an amazing place.  My sister-in-law Laura turned me on NASA’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day” website.  I bookmarked it and put it in my Daily folder so I get a cool new picture from NASA every day. While the web site has that late 1990’s look and feel, the pictures are stunning.

This is the June 12th eruption of the Sarychev Peak Volcano as photographed from the International Space Station (400 km above Earth).  Lest we forget, we are a very small species on a very small planet in a very large universe.  Try not to take yourself too seriously today – if you start, just ponder this photo.