Places

I travel a lot. I always have. The ease of air travel runs in cycles – we seem to be at another low point where lines are long, planes are full, flights are late / delayed / canceled, and almost all travel personnel (except apparently those on Southwest) are somewhere on the spectrum between grumpy and rude. But that’s just travel. You’ve got to get past the crazy TSA people before you can actually embark on your trip. The experience of standing in a long line, having to take your id out of your wallet so they can inspect it carefully, unpacking all your liquids and gels, listening to the same inane announcements over and over again, and having a completely random “inspect board pass as you go through the metal detector” algorithm gets old. Really old. Oh – and don’t forget to take your shoes and belt off. All in the quest to fly safer. ...

Yesterday, it was announced that ConocoPhillips is the mystery buyer of the old StorageTek campus. There was much revelry and prognosticating about how magnificent this is for the universe. I agree – but only if ConocoPhillips razes the entire grotesque ugly thing and builds something nice and integrated into the natural beauty of the 432 acres they just bought with perfect views of the flatirons. I was at a board meeting yesterday when this was announced and my first reaction was “superb – it’s not a large tech company.” A friend – who is on the board with me – said “damn, it’s not a large tech company.” One of the founders said “thankfully it’s not a large tech company.” ...

There is a magic spot on Highway 36 between Boulder and Louisville where 99.4% of all cell phone calls drop. While on a call tonight, the person I was talking to went through this magic spot. Our call dropped. I called him back 30 seconds later. We continued our call after having a chuckle about the inevitability of a dropped cell phone call at that particular spot on 36. My friend suggested that it is further evidence of the unique cosmic forces around here. We are found of saying that Boulder is 25 square miles surrounded by reality. We concluded that there is a wormhole on 36 that one goes through during the transition from Louisville to Boulder. This is the only explanation that we could come up for the reason that the mega-amazing-cell-phone companies can’t figure out how to do a handoff from one cell to the next at this particular spot in the universe.

When people find out that I’ve spent a lot of time in Alaska, they often ask me what it’s like. After struggling to describe it in a simple way that anyone in the lower 48 can relate to, I finally came up with something several weeks ago. Alaska is an order of magnitude larger than Colorado and has an order of magnitude less people. Plus it has an ocean.

Square 1 Bank has officially opened their office in Boulder with Ken Fugate moving to town full time. Bob Van Nortwick – one of Square 1’s founders – had done an awesome job of pioneering the Colorado market for Square, providing solid and constructive competition for the other main early stage banker in the area – Silicon Valley Bank. We work with (and love) both banks – and I’m delighted that there is a healthy enough entrepreneurial ecosystem in my backyard to support both of them.

I know – blasphemy in Boulder to say anything negative about CROX. However, I’m just channeling Howard Lindzon, the founder of WallStrip and stock trader extraordinarre. I don’t know jack about trading in public markets so I just ignore them and let other people do it for me, but it’s fun to watch what guys like Howard write. In Crocs (CROX) – Case Study … Supply Trumps Demand Howard offers free advice to the management team of Crocs for how to get out of the ditch. ...

Ahhh. This all changes tomorrow morning.

I’m getting dressed and about to head out to Boulder Open Coffee Club. It had been happening at Vic’s on Broadway, but they recently shut down. Today’s is now at The Cup (1521 Pearl) from 8am to 10am. The owners – Chris and Wendy – are great folks, it’s a superb venue, and the food is always great. As I was rolling through my feeds this morning, I noticed a few interesting Boulder-related things. It starts with Vic’s, and L’Absinthe, and The Reef, and Prima – four restaurants in One Boulder Plaza that abruptly shut down at the end of 2007. This isn’t a huge surprise to me – they were all chronically empty. The excuse of “no foot traffic” falls flat on me since they are two blocks away from the Pearl Street Mall. Something else was wrong, including rents that are probably much too high. Oh well – less short term choices for food and a reminder that the restaurant business is a bitch. ...

I just got a note and pictures two friends – one in Keystone and one in Aspen. Both said the most recent storms were incredible and the snow in the mountains in fantastic. The following is from Keystone. The note from my friend is “We got nailed with snow this past weekend. One of the top five storms I’ve seen after 15 years of living in Summit County. We are nearly 100% open and the skiing is great. Check out these photos from my back yard. We got about 2 feet in Silverthorne.”

As snowstorm #2 in Boulder the last week starts to diminish, I thought I’d offer up a picture of what it looks like in Homer, Alaska right now (at 10:30am Homer time.) That dark stuff on the bottom 10% of the picture is land. That lighter dark stuff at in the middle of the picture is the ocean. The top half of the picture is probably dark, fog, and clouds. That little dark stretch of land going to the left across the bottom of the picture is the Homer Spit. ...