Places

At my last Boulder Community Hours (or Random Day, or Bunker Hours, or whatever the latest branding of “office hours” is), I spent 15 minutes with Joel Gratz who runs the great site Colorado Powder Forecast*.* Even though we only spent 15 minutes together, Joel sent me a nice comment: “Office hours is such an amazing resource – many thanks for making yourself and others available to the community. This must be a unique concept in the professional, non-academic world! “ ...

For the last three years I’ve been laboring to help propagate the myth that it doesn’t snow much in Boulder and when it does it’s 55 degrees the next day and the snow all goes away. After getting back from a week of vacation on the beach in Mexico on Friday and now being on day five of the thermometer hovering around zero, tons of very frozen snow on the ground, and no chance that I’m going to contemplate heading outside for a run, I’ve decided to call bullshit on myself. ...

I’ve felt unsettled since we landed in DC on Saturday. During my run this afternoon on the Washington Mall, I decided to attribute some of it to the redeye I took from Seattle mid-week and some of it to Washington DC itself. Let’s start with the redeye. I’m 43. When I was in my 20’s and early 30’s, I regularly took redeye’s (often as frequently as once a week). Five hours of sleep on the plane due to my superpower of being able to sleep from wheels up to wheels down, a quick shower, an extra long toothbrushing session, and I was good for a full day. Wednesday night I took JetBlue from Seattle to Boston. Five solid hours of sleep followed by a ride to my hotel. I brushed my teeth and then crawled into bed at 8am for a little more sleep. I woke up at 1pm, had a meeting, and then went back to sleep until 5pm. After dinner I went to sleep around 10 and slept until 7. I felt like shit when I woke up, had a full day, and crashed again at 10pm Friday night. It’s Sunday and I finally don’t feel tired. Yesterday, I sent my assistant Kelly a note that said “Don’t ever let me fly on a redeye again.” ...

At dinner tonight we started telling miserable airplane travel stories. Everyone has a least one (or 7,321) so it’s fun to hear some of the really abysmal ones, especially the night before I head to the airport to catch an early morning flight. We were also talking about various philosophies of life and how to deal with difficult stuff. After a while the conversation circled back to air travel. And then I heard the best line of the night. ...

In case you were wondering what the Boulder Snowstorm resulted in (so far – it’s still coming down) at my house in Eldorado Springs, here you go! So there is no ambiguity, my dog Kenai loves it. And – no surprise, so does Brooks!

The Huffington Post launched their Denver channel today (but I’m going to call it the Boulder/Denver channel because it’s really both.) And they launched with a bunch of great, substantive stuff. Following is a sample of some of the entrepreneurial articles. Boulder: You’re Not in Kansas Anymore … : Kimbal Musk, the CEO of OneRiot and co-owner of The Kitchen has a great essay reflecting on what’s he has learned about Boulder in his seven years living here. ...

I had a great flight home from LA on Southwest Airlines on Friday. My boycott on United has been going pretty well, but Amy and I are flying on it tomorrow to New York as it seems to be the only reasonable way to get from Denver to New York. I’m pessimistic. Plus I have a nasty cold so that’ll just make it more enjoyable. But – I digress. When I got off the plane I went to the bathroom. As I lined up in my little stall next to 10 of my newest friends, I noticed that five of them had either iPhone’s or BlackBerry’s out and were typing as they went about their business. Now – I’ll admit to doing this occasionally, but in this particular case I was kind of stunned by the density of the juxtaposition of peeing and smartphones. ...

Some folks from the Boulder startup community came together last August to see who could eat the most sushi. I participated in the Sushi Regurge, but (as I promised Amy) stopped once I was full. Actually, I didn’t stop when I was full, I stopped when I couldn’t choke down piece number 55. While that was going on, a couple guys who met at Boulder Startup Weekend 2 were over on the side catching up and intelligently observing rather than participating in Sushi Regurge. After realizing they both started out their careers working for nonprofits, they started discussing how they hadn’t volunteered at all recently. Being good techies, they whipped out their iPhones and searched the App Store for “volunteer” only to find only some apps for Tennessee Volunteers fans. They looked around at the startup talent in the room, busily wolfing down sushi, and said, “This should exist. I bet we could build it.” ...

Dave Jilk, my first business partner (Feld Technologies) and I have settled into a nice annual tradition of climbing a 14er each August. This year we climbed three in one day – Mt. Democrat , Mt. Cameron , and Mt. Lincoln . We started at 6:15am Saturday morning. By 8:15am we were at the top of Mt. Democrat. The purists don’t count Mt. Cameron as a 14er since there isn’t enough descent between Mt. Democrat and Mt. Lincoln. But I count it because by the time you get to the top of Mt. Cameron you definitely feel like you’ve climbed another big mountain. Plus, I was powered by my TechStars socks. ...

I am so totally, utterly, and completely sick of air travel. If you follow me on Twitter , you’ve had to put up with me whining for the past week on my Denver to Seattle to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Denver travel fiasco (hint: not a single plane was on time.) I hurt my back playing tennis ten days ago so the extra stimuli of lower back pain made the experience extra-special enjoyable. ...