Alaska

Just foreshadowing. We are going to the edge of the United States to see them. Experiencing this puts a lot of things in perspective for me. And, happy birthday mom .

Amy and I have been in Homer, Alaska for the last ten days. Above is the view from the parking lot at the ocean in Anchor Point, which is literally “the end of the road on the western side of the US.” Amy grew up here and it’s one of the places I go when I want to get some distance from everything. When we started coming here in the mid-1990s together, we’d literally have to disconnect in a lot of the places we hung out at. Today, you can only figuratively disconnect, as the internet will find you almost everywhere. ...

Amy and I just funded all of the unfunded DonorsChoose projects in Alaska as part of the annual DonorsChoose #BestSchoolDay event. As part of the #BestSchoolDay program, your donation is matched. In all of the Alaska projects, Aspect Ventures matched our donation. Huge thanks to Jennifer Fonstad, Theresia Gouw, and team! Amy grew up in Alaska and we have a house in Homer, which is what motivated us to support Alaska this year on #BestSchoolDay. As I was supporting projects, I saw one in Homer and a few Sphero and littleBits requests which made me smile. ...

I was at a Nima board meeting today and was asked by a new friend on the team about my link to Homer, Alaska. After a brief explanation, I said “McDonald’s made Homer famous around some Super Bowl by making a completely inappropriate TV ad there.” I couldn’t remember the year – I thought it was in the 1980s somewhere. It was 1990. Google found it immediately. It’s hilarious, and completely inappropriate. This is where Amy and I live, some of the time. ...

Nope – Amy and I aren’t moving to Homer. While we have a home in Homer, where we will be for the next three weeks, we still call Boulder, Colorado our home. But we came very close to moving to Homer in 1995. We were living in Boston at the time. I’d sold my first company, Feld Technologies, in 1993. By the end of 1994 I had a staff job, reporting to the co-chairmen of AmeriData where I travelled all over the US helping with acquisitions and generally causing trouble. At some point Amy and I realized we could live anywhere and we knew that Boston wasn’t home. During one of the long conversations we had at the time about our future, we started talking about calling it quits and moving to Homer, Alaska. ...

When I opened my daily folder, a beautiful picture of an Aurora Over Alaska graced the front page of APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). Just another reason to love Alaska.

Amy and I have been up at our house in Homer, Alaska for the last two weeks. We try to spent every July up here – something we’ve tried to do every year for the past decade (we missed in 2007 and 2009.) I’ve had a lot of people say things similar to “I hope you are having a great vacation” which I corrected for the first few days (we aren’t on vacation – just living in Homer for the month) but I got tired of this so I stopped correcting folks after a few days. ...