New England Walkabout, Bill Draper and a whale hits the beach

New England Walkabout
It was fall and time for a trip to New England. My great friend Craig Harvey and I landed in Boston and things went well at first. We rented some sort of Honda and pushed start but the beast refused to move. We pumped the brake peddle, and whispered incantations; we yelled threats but were finally forced to ask a young fellow in the yard how they could rent us a brand new car that wouldn’t start. He looked at us with kindness and explained that all we had to do was push on the pedal (formerly known as the gas peddle) because it was a hybrid and it was actually on all along.

Ok, Ok, let’s get out of here. So into Boston which glowed invitingly in the distance. My advice - don’t take the 90 into town. Sure it goes to Boston but it has no exits at all in Bean Town so we ended up in Cambridge and had to double back. We were headed for the North End but somehow missed it and after about an hour found ourselves back at the airport. In fact, right in front of the Hertz office. We went inside and asked directions. It turned out that the neighborhood we were headed for was not much more than a long walk, which we considered doing at that point. Finally we parked in town and tried to open the trunk. This turned out to be something of a challenge. It was cold and Craig wanted his jacket. After a careful search and an expletive-filled interval, we uncovered the cleverly camouflaged release button where we were surprised to discover that his bag was back at the Hertz counter. This was starting to get interesting. So, to the Hertz office once more where we grabbed the bag under the suspicious glare of the counterman. Safaris like this are really quite difficult and fraught with peril - so be warned. We went back to Boston but failing to find parking ended up in Cambridge where we had been seemingly days before.

We stopped at a hotel and asked for a room. The desk clerk laughed heartily and when he calmed down explained that it was regatta weekend, the biggest weekend of the year. The Head of The Charles is a boat race where folks from all over the world come to the historied river to row skinny watercraft up and down, all the time being screamed at by some angry little person with a megaphone.

Just before bursting into tears at the prospect of sleeping in the car (me, not Craig) they miraculously scrounged a room they had been saving and we were in. The next morning as we approached our demon car we discovered it was running. It seems the engine charges the battery and comes on from time to time, it you don’t shut the thing down. No matter, it gets great mileage even when it is left running all night.

The race was spectacular. On a clear cool morning from the JFK Bridge, with Harvard as the backdrop, we inspected these clever craft sliding by. It was one of those great Ivy League moments that made us - two Berkeley alums - envious until we remembered that the genius types today often drop out of Harvard and move to our neck of the woods.

Our next stop was Concord. You know, home of the Concord grape. Ok Concord, what else have you done for us? Actually they did quite a bit. Concord was the Palo Alto of its day. The Revolutionary War started there because it was a place was the big thinkers lived. At the Concord Museum they have one of the lanterns on display that were lit in the Old North Church indicating if the Redcoats were coming by land or sea. Now it might be one of lanterns but I’m in the famous artifact business too, so I wonder.

When they weren’t starting wars and inventing grape juice the local intelligencia wrote about nature and self-reliance. Emerson proposed that we have a respect for the natural world as opposed to the popular feeling that we were at odds nature so he is considered by many to be the father of the ecology movement. Louisa M. Alcott promoted women’s rights so the women’s suffrage movement has roots in Concord. And Concord was also the center of the anti-slavery movement in America. Concord was also the center of clock making in America and a country that runs on time is one that prospers.

This area, like so many across New England, is replete with closed factories left over from the Industrial Revolution. Many have been shut since WWII. There was a brief revival as the tech hub in the 60s and 70s around route 128 but we snatched much of the rug from under those enterprises and took it out west.

Craig and I drove across the Massachusetts to Great Barrington to spend the night with Bruce Kelly in his country manse surrounded a forest of trees flaunting their finery of yellow, gold and red, all screaming, “look at me, look at me!”

We then zipped down to Old New York and dropped off the devil car. New York is in a word - Fabulous. It is like landing on the moon but in a hybrid Honda. My son Dylan showed up and we joined the throngs on the sidewalks. On one excursion we spied a really clever alligator purse in a store window. We guessed 5 gs. It was $22,000. I saw a crystal chandler in one shop – a cool 140 grand, plus shipping. In another store they has just sold a 1943 $10,000 Treasury note for $55,000. We were really taken with the idea that there were several stores which sold money.

At one point we found ourselves in a Rolls-Bentley-Lamborghini-Porsche store. There were so many cars at roughly a half million that it was hard to pick just one. And who the heck buys a Rolls off the rack? After all you want the albino crocodile hide luggage to be monogrammed just right don’t you?

One of my aims was to go to Argosy Books to check out their first edition of a Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. This is the book printed in 1840 about California that set the world’s imagination on fire before the Gold Rush. This 5-story bookstore is jammed with books, maps and prints on every imaginable subject. Another store that really grabbed us was Evolution in SoHo. There they specialize in selling the skeletons of all sorts. I really mean all sorts, mostly human fetus bones. Ugh!

We made sure to cruise the art galleries in Chelsea where we had real trouble figuring out the economic model. One gallery held a multi-ton, stainless steel tree-like structure festooned with refrigerator sized human organ-like parts also of metal. It wound throughout the many rooms and had been constructed on site. Not just unsalable but unmovable as well. The most provocative show was by Gottfried Helnweig. This is a major painter and wack job who paints photorealistic portraits of young girls. They are huge canvases and the detail is unparalleled. Many are hauntingly lyrical but a few of the kids are wearing SS uniforms and seem to have been recently gunned down. Might look good in the hall but…

On Broadway we attended a strange and ragged production of Merchant of Venice. I know, who am I to criticize Shakespeare? The one making you lunch that’s who! The recent movie is great but I think the actual story is a mess. Sure, the language is spectacular with its “pound of flesh” and “all that glitters in not gold.” but the story is …ehhhh. The production was either badly or misdirected as it had the feel of a 19th century melodrama with a lot of eye rolling and over acting. At one point I saw a fellow in the audience who looked like the love child of Yahoo Serious and Crusty the Clown. It was the orange haired head of Python, Eric Idle. We made visual contact and rolled our eyes in sync with the actors on stage. A perfect New York experience.

My favorite store was Plaza Watch and Jewelry. It’s near 57th and 7th and had stacks of rather valuable watches in plastic bags piled about a foot deep in the windows. I mean really, all these Rolexes just heaped up like junk. Inside they sold ephemera so obtuse that I was lucky to escape. Obscure baseball cards, dusty animal heads and a tiny bellman’s outfit sized for the midgets they used to employ in that trade. I really wanted it but 15 grand? Yikes! The owner was a man so rotund he couldn’t get between the counters and the floors were strewn with years of trash. And this in the shadow of Carnage Hall.

New York City is completely in love with itself and I can see why. There is a saying that if you, “Stand in front Rockefeller Center long enough and you will eventually see everyone you have ever met.” Sounds about right.


BLUE WHALE ON BEACH
Whales have been tooling around off San Francisco like they own the joint this year in numbers not seen in decades. In a two-hour period this fall at the Farallones we counted at least two dozen humpbacks. For some whales all this swimming about doesn’t work out too well when there is a contest between them and a ship. The ship generally wins and there have been at least six documented whale strikes off our immediate coast this year. It hasn’t been fully confirmed but it is likely that the 80-foot blue whale that washed up on the beach below Pescadero was the victim of one such encounter.


The mother came ashore in early October accompanied by an aborted half-term calf. This forlorn pair drew a crowd but a small one compared to a Justin Bieber sighting. After a couple of weeks there were never more than a handful of folks at the beach to look at the whale. I think this odd considering that the last blue to come ashore was in the 1920s on the Atlantic in Canada. Here is to opportunity to touch the largest animal to walk or swim on this planet since it was formed 4.6 billion years ago on, I believe, a Thursday.

In a month the whale was been reduced by sea and tide to about half its bulk and it will soon be just a few bones left bleaching on the beach. I would dearly love to scrounge a bone but they are not only quite huge but also surrounded by signs warning that to disturb any part of a marine mammal can result in a federal felony rap. I think I‘ll just leave them there.

I do have a narwhal tusk, which I was sent by the president of Iceland but it is still officially on loan and is officially their property. In Iceland they pass these out like pixie sticks and, along with fish, crushing national debt and sadness, are their only exports. Can the troubles in Iceland be the karmic result of their tendency to use whale meat in their tacos? I wonder.

Day of the horse
Every year on the second Saturday in October hundreds of horses descend on Woodside and ride around pretending to obey the commands they have been taught. They way these horses are so lovingly cared for I wonder if it’s the rider or the horse giving the orders. The Day of the Horse is one on which you hear all sorts of unusual expressions like ramuda, belvin and corn liquor.

Woodside is a very old American town by California standards. It used to be a two-fisted Wild West town with saloons, cowboys on horseback and gambling halls (actually with all the venture capital speculating there is still a lot of gambling). I’m told that the town used to be called Whiskey Hill and with 22 saloons at one point that sounds about right. The bordellos have largely disappeared but we still have the horse. In fact Woodside is one of the horsiest towns in the world. Horseback riding today is one of the few pastimes where the participants don’t get laughed at for sporting a funny hat and leather whip…or do they?

We have a hitching post at Buck’s and it isn’t some vestige of the past but is still in daily use. A custom has developed of bringing one’s bridle into Buck’s and draping it over the Statue of Liberty. I know some will say that this is sacrilege but in spite of what you might have heard this is not the real Statue of Liberty but in fact is a rather bad casting made out of Modelo beer cans. But the horses are real enough and the town has enthusiastically welcomed the event.

In 2005 Fentress Hall and Donna Poy thought it would be fun to invite a few riders to come and ride all around the town and have a little horse fair at town hall. Now the ride is in its sixth year and the event has grown to include well over 300riders with many more coming to the fair. There are countless horse events all over the country - jumping, cutting, ride & tie, and thoroughbred racing but the Day of the Horse isn’t any sort of contest. It’s just a day in the sun with your horse and your hat riding along - spitin tabaccie and mumbling, “Gol’ dern, Effie, I can’t wait to get to the general store and get me some a that peppermint candy and sarsaparilla”.

The Buck’s Collection.
Jim Lyons approached me one day and said that he wanted to produce a book documenting all the junk here at Buck’s. I said I was flattered but couldn’t see why he would bother. After all I had just cleaned out my garage and nailed a few bits of flotsam to the walls. It took a bit of convincing but he finally persuaded me to let him loose with his team.

This book is actually the product of several collaborators foremost Jim who is retired physicist. Jeff Thomas took the pictures and there is an iphone app, naturally, which was created by Tom Digrazia. Another key person was, the brains behind Buck’s, Margaret MacNiven. Me, I didn’t do anything but wander around drinking coffee and chatting.

Jim made it easy walking me around having me talk into a tape recorder like some WW I doughboy in an old folks home. Now Jim is a very precise fellow and I think it might be his preference that I stop moving or adding things but the day the book was finished I was installing yet more stuff; so this book is snapshot of the day that it was taken and, like the tattoos on a San Quentin lifer, its bound to evolve from one day to the next.

If you use this book intending to build an exact copy of Buck’s in another town you owe me a license fee like Tokyo Disney. On the other hand just go ahead. I’ll can give you the name of my Moscow space suit guy and he can definitely kick you a suit.

Bill Draper
The Startup Game written by Bill Draper

It has been some time since we have featured two books at Buck’s because we run the risk of losing our distinction as the smallest bookstore in the world when we do. But in this case Bill Draper’s new book represents a milestone in a career and a life that is simply Dazzling.

Bill’s father established the first venture capital firm on the west coast and Bill went on to found Sutter Hill Ventures as well as Draper Richards an early stage VC outfit in San Francisco. I’ll let you discover the facts about him in his own words in the book. Here I’m more concerned about the man.

I am not alone in saying that Bill has long been the most elegant personification of ‘class’ we have seen in these parts. He’s Sean Connery good looking but without the pistol. Bill is the middle generation of a three part (so far) saga of venture folks. Sadly, due to genetic mutation, the third in line, Tim Draper, came out a little strange with his propensity to leap from buildings in a Batman suit beating some helpless Stratocaster half to death but even he can’t dim the lights of this tribe.

In Silicon Valley we think we are pretty hot stuff and have invented modern cool. If you know Bill you will see that this is true. But the real measure of a man isn’t the accomplishments that you can see listed on Wikipedia but is reflected in the eyes of his family and friends and I count myself lucky to call Bill my friend.

The book will be available here in early January.

Turkey Lebanon Syria Jordan

Ever since I discovered the long lost Archimedes Codex I have been fascinated by Byzantium and felt it was high time I went to Constantinople to see what was left of the joint. People rave about Istanbul and they tell you it’s a fantastic place but frankly Istanbul was a bit dull even though we still had a great time because I conned my cousin Will Milne (local home builder here in Woodside) and his son Gary as well as my son Tyler to accompany me. A retinue, just like in old Byzantium.


Will found us a great hotel with a commanding view of the Bosporus and I was in awe of so many ships going back and forth. Coal barges, freighters,lumber ships, container vessels, ferries, tugs, fishing boats and tanker after tanker. At times I could count over a 125 large ships at once.
Turkey is surprisingly expensive and let me tell you the food is on a par with San Francisco in cost and Russia in execution. Fortunately our hotel had a spectacular breakfast and convivial staff with fun guests even if several turned out to be Buck’s customers so it was like being here but with more hummus.

The thing about Istanbul is that it is paved with mosques. I have seen plenty of mosques but the original big dog, Hagia Sophia, from the 6th century is impressive. People profess to love it but it does have a heavy, dumped from the sky appearance though it is cheered up a bit by Minute Man Missile looking minarets. It was originally a Byzantine Church and was later converted to a mosque. It set the domed style you see all over the Moslem world. In fact, it was copied several times full size in Istanbul such as Blue Mosque right next door from the 11th century which is almost identical. Several others just as big and countless smaller ones fill the town for the five times daily battle of the bands, or more properly the singing of prayers which seems to be a calling back and forth from tower to tower. The Hagia Sophia is now desanctified and is a museum. We were going in and the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel
was coming out. She seemed nice if in a bit of hurry with a few dozen
security and about bazillion press folks mobbing her.

I had always wanted to see the Golden Horn. Did you know that John C. Freemont named the Golden Gate after Constantinople’s Gold Horn? This inlet was famously the port of the eastern Roman Empire’s fleet. It was protected by an iron chain that stretched across the mouth. The dynamics of chain sag make this difficult to imagine but at one Ottoman castle they had what was purported to be a piece of it. I tried to buy it but they would not sell. Tyler located MiniTurk a village of miniatures of the great buildings in Turkey which we accessed by boat across the Horn.

At one point we were crossing the Horn in a small open boat, ably skippered by a man unaccountably named Murray. or His face was wrapped in a cheerful smile if not exactly backed by an excess of teeth. Murray might have been Charon’s brother piloting us over the River Styx to Hell as in Greek mythology for all the condoms and cow heads in the water. The luster of gold had definitely moved to another part of town. Later we went out on the much larger and cleaner Bosporus for a cruise along the shore. Here we saw the mansions of the super rich. It seems that Istanbul has the 4th most billionaires of any major city, somewhat behind greater Palo Alto but still, Istanbul. They don’t seem to value privacy much because the pools and yards were there for all the tourists to see. They have some fine yachts too. One was the Savarona a 408 footer from the U.S. built in 1931 by the granddaughter of the guy who built the Brooklyn Bridge. The yacht was bought by Turkey and given to Kermal Ataturk the revered founder who brought Turkey into the modern world.

We were repeatedly advised not to make fun of the revered founder. He kicked the clerics out of government and made the people adopt western dress, science and education. He got rid of the cumbersome Arabic alphabet and he gave women rights. He basically remade the entire place after kicking out the Europeans and the Ottomans. The man dated Zsa Zsa Gabor. Not the wizened old cop-slapper but the hot international 1930s Zsa Zsa. He had the world’s largest palace, the largest yacht and everyone’s respect. He died of excess partying. Why we would think of making fun of him is beyond me. Of course since they mentioned it I was always just an inch away from screaming some pretty coarse indictment of the man but I didn’t want to end up in a Turkish prison.

Did someone say Turkish prison? Well, who doesn’t recall the delightful travelogue The Midnight Express the semi accurate tale of a young American who was smuggling hash and got tossed in prison in Istanbul. He was not pleased with the prison experience, especially after serving many years and then having his sentence extended to life. “Hey, this is America you can’t do…oh right.” Anywho, this book and movie really made the Turk’s heads explode and this was another thing we were asked not to bring up. In fact we were warned about not stealing towels and to avoid earthquakes. The prison in the story was a few steps from our hotel and is now a Four Seasons so at least the food there is better.

I love all the odd stuff about a country. Down on the waterfront we found a brisk trade in fish sandwiches. Hundreds of folks simply crazy for these fresh looking sandwiches. Tyler and Gary gamely shorted a couple of them, bite by bite. They were made of mackerel and smelled like cat food. It was right by these fishwives that we found about a dozen nightclubs devoted to colorful beanbag chairs. These clubs were located on a bridge across the Horn and each had hundreds of vinyl beanbags. It is exceedingly difficult to look elegant in a contraption like this especially with the thousands of fishing lines overhead as fishermen with huge piles of bait try their luck from the bridge. As far as I could see none had caught a dern thing but they sure had a pantload of bait. No, it seems the fish they were catching were 4” sardines. In that same area was a fellow doing a brisk trade in weighing people on a bathroom scale for about a dime. Will was a little amazed and had himself weighed and insisted I do it even though the scale was clearly broken.

Sure we saw classy things in the berg like the archeological museum.

The Greek and Roman marble was better than any collection I have ever seen. They had on loan The Discus Thrower from The Louvre. This is famous as being both exquisite and for the fact that that an ancient head repairer got the head on backwards. The marble sarcophagi of the ancient Romans were the finest marble works imaginable. I wish I could be a dead Roman sometimes as they made it look so much fun.

Of course the main highlight in Istanbul was the Obama cat. This is cat that lives in the Hagia Sophi. When Obama came a couple of years back he was photographed with this cat and ever since it has been preening for photo opps.

One final thing is that everyone smokes. Kids, old ladies and every man. But on TV they can’t show smoking. We watched the movie Dick Tracy in the hotel and they put little animated birds, dolphins and cats over the cigarettes and these little animations remade the film in the best way and really made us want to smoke.

Of course we could be in Turkistan. There you are only allowed to smoke inside building so the restaurants are full of smoke but the streets are clear. The great leader there is definitely nuts. He has prohibited seatbelts as encouraging reckless driving. I have got to go there.

Lebanon

Gary and Will had to return home so Tyler and I flew to Beirut in Lebanon. They call this pile the Paris of the Mediterranean but I’ve been to Paris and they must be thinking of a different Paris. It looked great from the air but on the ground you can see they have a management problem. I have some suggestions. Stop letting open sewers run onto the beach where you want folks to swim. Patch the bullet holes. I know it looks macho but really the war is over and 50 million machine gun holes makes they place look a little unkempt. The whole country is actually on high alert. Many street corners have tanks with real cannons and a guy sitting at the ready. Tens of thousands of soldiers infect the streets, all with machine guns and more sitting at 50 calibers hunkered behind sandbags in blown out buildings.

Here’s the amazing thing. They are completely ignored. The place is also clogged with Ferrari dealers, Gucci stores and more Mercedes dealers then anywhere else in the world. I saw as many as two Benz stores in one block and this was out in the country. There are four jobs in Lebanon. Cab driver, soldier, car dealer and plastic surgeon. The place is quite prosperous but it hasn’t translated to elegance. The hills are crammed with a skelter of apartment buildings as high as 12 stories on the tops of the overbuilt hills. The beaches are where the poor folks or even squatters live.

Tyler and I rolled into our beachfront hotel. I asked for a room with a view of the ocean. “No we can’t, high season.” Later we discovered there were about 3 of 100 rooms occupied and we got a view of the construction site. Well, I guess it was high season. We walked all over the city. It is one massive block of concrete. The citizens love to brag about the vibrant nightlife. This means drinking, sex and waving your Rolex in the air. I checked this out with some locals and after feigning insult they agreed. This doesn’t mean that the people are unpleasant. Far from it. The Lebanese are very hospitable (except at our hotel where they told Tyler he couldn’t play the grand piano in the lobby but to their credit they were right. He couldn’t, because it was a fake) The Lebanese will admit that there are a lot of bejeweled posers showing off. But they will insist on putting you up in their home, buying you dinner and probably giving you the Rolex. A generous and warm people while being self absorbed and wildly proud of their concrete playground.

Outside of town we went to Grotte de Jeita.
This is a cavern of such heartbreaking beauty that their campaign to have it listed as one of the 7 natural wonders of the world is an effort we will support. Our cab driver, Michael, had suggested we go there and he was so right to tell us. Later we asked him why he was taking us in the wrong direction. In halting English (they speak Arabic and French with a good deal of English) that he said we should come to home and meet his wife over tea. Snap, Michael, another good call and there we were on his veranda looking at pictures of his kids and eating baklava. “Hey Mike, can I have your watch?”

Our preferred mode of travel was the people’s bus. Cheap, and you meet great folks. One ride was with an entire bus of soldiers. All stern faced until Tyler loosed then up with a Beatles song. We drove through Biblos (where the alphabet was invented) to Tripoli. I liked this seaside city. Crazy with bullet holes but no tourists except us and a vibrant market with funny, happy store keepers. From there we took a white knuckler into the mountains to Bcharre. This looks almost like an Italian town with its terraces and olive groves. It’s a ski resort though the snow was nearly gone. This is the birthplace and grave of Kahil Gibran. To some hippies from the 60s this is a big deal. Like Pirsig and Castaneda, Gibran was a minor writer appealing to drug addled hedonists.

In fact many people in the Middle East are hedonists in the best possible sense. A young man in Jordon was lamenting how much he hated his country. He said the people have no ambition, no imagination. “All they want to do is make love to their wives and eat.” Ha! This struck us as highly evolved.

So with a great sushi dinner in Beirut (our last American food for a while) we headed to the old part of the country, the Bekka Valley and the city of Baalbek a Roman
stronghold and religious center.
The ruins of the temples are among the finest from ancient Rome. Some of the columns are 60 feet tall and have never fallen. These granite columns came from Egypt across the sea, over the mountains and through the desert and the biggest temple took about 200 years to erect. This take-your-time attitude is still the way they build all over this region. Houses now are of cast concrete and are one to four stories with the rebar projecting from the roof. The upper floors are usually unfinished waiting for the next generation to complete. This gives much of the Middle East a tentative look when it’s just that they are in no hurry.

It was in Baalbek where we had a superb meal, maybe the best of our trip at a tourist place in front of the ruins. It was Good Friday and as we were served dinner outside a procession of Roman soldiers came down the street whipping a guy dressed as Christ carrying a cross. True dinner theater. We ate with the troubled son of the owner. He was about 22 and with impeccable English told how he crashed his car and got busted for driving on drugs but his father paid the cops and got him off. He was dressed as a hip-hop American but he was local lad in the middle of nowhere except his town happens to be the Hezbollah stronghold. At one point they took a few rockets in the village and the kid told us he took a handful of Xanex and ran through the streets yelling that life was a joke as they were under fire. He also informed us that Tom and Jerry cartoons are very popular in the Middle East. When I asked him why, he said that Hanna or was it Barbarra, the creators, was Lebanese. You really do see Tom and Jerry a lot on TV there and you can buy the comics in any small town. I looked them up: Irish and Italian. But hey, let them dream.

People advise you everywhere not to discuss religion and politics just before they lay into these issues. They are all experts but with very biased points of view. I am well versed on the Mexican-American War and the conquest of California and so I will stick to that. If you want my opinion on religion and politics in the Middle East I plead ignorance. I wish all sides peace and good health.

Syria

Now Syria is not a country most folks just stroll on into. We had to send to the embassy in DC to get a visa and swear we had never been to “occupied Palestine.” Where the heck is that?...oh Israel. But when we got to the border the lines were 8 hours long so we ditched our cab and walked behind buses and vans through 4 checkpoints without being stopped. We figured that we had a visa and the worst case was several years in prison but they never actually saw us so there we were on the road to Damascus.

Ahhh, Damascus at Easter. We knew some Christians in the old city and they told us that Easter was a huge deal and the place was full with revelers. Hum… well, there are a few Christians. Very few, and the city was bustling, but Easter is not a big Moslem holiday. From a hilltop at night we could see the city the mosques lit up in green and the churches in blue. Very little blue.

The women in Syria and Jordan have to keep their heads covered except for tourists and the few Christians. Many have to wear long robes and then there are all the variations. Some women are completely covered in black with a little fly screen to see out. I don’t think the bug problem is really that bad. To us it seems a kind of insanity to punish a woman by putting her in a black body tent in the desert. Arabs make all sorts of excuses, like the women have really sexy clothes underneath but there is no question that this is geared to reducing a woman’s humanity.

We soon discovered why they are not big drinkers in the Arab world. The drinkers have all been killed crossing the street. It is truly a life threatening adventure to do this. It was the only time we felt at all unsafe.

The old marketplace, the Souk, is the stuff of legends. Roman gates flank the market which has been in the same place for at least 3,500 years and possibly twice that long. Here you see heaps of spices and gadgets, vegetables, meat, and clothes from the full black burqa to rhinestone underwear worn by hookers or hooker wannabes. This place is fully authentic.

We hung out with some locals and their hospitality was lavish and generous. We went to one restaurant billed as the best in the city and it was indeed grand. It was a rooftop garden with trays overflowing with Arabic food. Three of us ate like caliphs and the bill was about $35. Syria is a bargain.

We took a three-hour drive to Palmyra,
a city as remote in Roman times as now. It consists of a mile long paved road flanked by temples, theaters and endless rows of columns (Romans were simply nuts for columns). This place made its fortune as a trading center but we were hard pressed to imagine how such wealth could accumulate in the desert. I guess we have Vegas but back then it was so hard move stuff. Before ships went to the orient the trade route was surging with camel trains bringing the wealth of the east in trade for the gold of the west. Palmyra was basically a port of call in this sea of sand. The Roman ruins in the East are far more complete than in Italy because of they are so remote.

One of our goals was to go to the Damascus Gate restaurant billed as the largest in the world. 6014 seats, staff of 1800, 40 million dollars, 400,000 sq ft. We got there and a real nice fellow took us on the grand tour. It looked like a stage set from a Bollywood film but built by inept children. Bad stucco and colored lights, plastic chairs and a few palm trees. In the whole place there might have been 2,500 seats and there were only about 30 customers. To us the joint next door looked far bigger and a lot nicer. There were huge billboards proclaiming its Guinness recordness but it had obviously been tarted up for the pictures and all the good furniture had been repossessed. The center piece of the restaurant is a meteorite about the size of toaster. We absolutely loved this place.

South of Damascus was Bosra a Roman stronghold featuring the finest intact amphitheater from ancient times. It looked exactly like a stadium of today with nearly every stone block is still in place. The town surrounding it is so complete that people continue to occupy the Roman buildings.

Jordan
Then it was time to bid this friendly country adios and cross the boarder to Jordan. We found a cabman who promised to take us over for $8 for 15 miles which was expensive but we did pass through 4 checkpoints in Syria, to get out, and 9 in Jordan to enter. The Jordanians took our pictures, taped our voices, made us fill out papers and fingerprinted us. The main grilling was transacted over a counter which came up to our chests. The agents at the desks behind could not see over it when seated and the shorter people could not see them so business was conducted with a screaming pantomime of hands waving over across this counterproductive installation. We were about to roll up our sleeves for a blood test when a guy with a gun called us into his office. “Sit,” he insisted darkly as he waved us onto a battered couch. He perused at our papers glumly and glared over his glasses at us. He was looking for sweating drug mules (possible) or perhaps American terrorists (unlikely). Seeing no sweat or bulges he broke into a big smile and said “Welcome to Jordan! Obama good!” This was so typical of many places we went. In many countries the common folk are friendly enough but the guys with pistolays are a bit dickish. In the Middle East you learn to not mind a guy in a uniform even when he waves an AK47 in your face with one hand and shakes one of yours with another. In Mexico I have been robbed by uniformed police twice but in Jordan the cops hold open the door for you.

Crossing the border everything looked different. The sexy underwear in the shops windows was even nastier and the homes were more prosperous with sloping roofs indicating they were actually finished. We passed lush fields and the crazy driving ceased (except for the curious habit of spending a good deal of time on the wrong side of the road). We went through speed traps every 5 miles or so and police roadblocks every 10 so it looked like there had either been a major prison break or it was just business as usual in the Middle East.

Amman was a surprise. It isn’t old at all. This place sprung up in the last 100 years and most in the last 30 so the city crawls over steep hills and looks much like San Francisco Amman’s newest sister city. The ancients didn’t build up steep hills but cars changed all that. We first went to the Russian embassy where they were their typically hostile selves. I love Russia; the rudest damn people on earth. Anyway Tyler wanted to go see a friend in Moscow but they wouldn’t give him a visa. Just before going there we were making copies for the visa and found ourselves in the 250 foot long lobby in a schmancy hotel featuring a 40-foot shark tank with 12, we counted em, 12 large sharks and about 2 million bucks in couches and knickknacks. This is where the diplomats stay. They wanted about $800 a night so we found a nice hotel a few blocks away with no sharks but included a very nice lobby cat for about $40.

That night in Amman we met street vendors who musically yell out in Arabic “we got fressssh fish here, we got riiiiipe tomatoes!” All singing out at once which is quite something. We liked Amman; modern, but not fancy. Friendly and fast without the feeling of being hustled. There are pictures of the king everywhere and he is smiling while dressed in the desert camo, with bands of bullets and the ever present curved knife. In the morning we snagged a bus to Petra in the south. We just loved the busses. 2 or 3 dollars for up to two hours with working people. On-off, on-off, a continual parade. In Petra we met the first high density of tourists on the trip. There is town next to this ancient city which it is all hotels and restaurants. A good many day trippers come by bus but leave in the early afternoon making the place eerily quiet.

The ancient city is known to many as the one depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is a city built in the depths of a red sandstone canyon miles from any vegetation. It was a famous place for tombs and once again a trading center. The unbelievable part is that most of what is left is carved from living rock. This means that many of the structures, some 140 feet high, are carved in place. To enter the city you walk down a natural stone canyon past carvings of camel caravans and gods of all sorts. The canyon is at times only 15 feet wide and becomes ever deeper until the cliffs are couple of hundred feet high. After about a half a mile you emerge to face an immense ceremonial building and as you walk ever lower into the valley it widens out and the tombs cut in the hills become more numerous. The carvings are primarily Roman but other cultures left their marks including the Aramaic speaking Nabateans. You can almost hear the faint voices of Cleopatra, Herod and Trajan in this desolate outpost.

After about 2 miles and dropping perhaps 1,200 feet we found a mile long flight of stairs to the very top of the ridge. The Bedouins call this place The End of The World and we could see for miles all round. There we found Bedouins in traditional bandoleer and dagger festooned outfits selling tea and cokes. Like all the other locals we met they were not at all weary of visitors and were unfailingly gracious. The Bedouins live all over this region and are the desert nomads still living in black goat hair tents in the searing dessert or on impossible mountain redoubts.

Petra is the single most interesting place, ancient or modern, I have ever seen. We simply could not leave. They tell you to be out of the ancient city before sunset but there were no patrols and we were there well after dark.
That night after an excellent dinner we were awakened to the sound of the prayers resonating between the stone walls of the valley…at 4am. I came to like this plaintive wailing. I liked it just a bit less when they started up just 30 minutes later for another full set. Still Petra, with its echoing prayers and high speed internet seriously rocks! As we left town we met four intrepid Dutch fellows driving from Europe to South Africa for the World Cup. They had their names and blood types stenciled on the truck's body. “You never know,” said one grimly.

And on we pushed to the Wadi Rum,
an even more desolate desert region yet further south. OK the whole place is a desert but this is where Lawrence in both the movie and in the fact worked his magic. The real and the Peter O’Toole Lawrence are held in high regard in the Wadi and we stood right where much of the movie was made and the trains real and cinematic were blown up in the war with the Turks.

We took a jeep out to an oasis and as we crossed the sand saw a man sitting in the middle of a pile of rocks laughing and waving a sandwich at us. On our way back he was still there and still laughing and shaking his sandwich. Just another man driven mad by the desert no doubt.

We caught a cab (and keep in mind we are now 40 miles from a town and cabs jsimply spring up from nowhere) and drove to Aqaba. This is the town that Lawrence surprised by crossing the Nafud Desert in summer. It locals said this was impossible at that time of year. We found ourselves on the spot called the Sun’s Anvil but it wasn’t so bad. Of course it was 65 outside and we went by car.

From Aqaba we went to the Dead Sea and man it is a most desolate place. Tyler had booked us online into a resort for $150 and we passed through the iron-gated security into the lavish lobby. Field weary and Petra-dusted we inquired about our room accompanied by a stunning woman at the grand piano. A Savile Row suited manager was distressed when he couldn’t find our reservation. Meanwhile the help plied us with fruit drinks and nut trays while Savile Row hoped we wouldn’t freak out as seemed common there judging by the Russian heavies snorting and bulging all over the lobby. One guy was paying his bill with stack of hundreds the size of a small dog.

I thought we were getting a heck of deal and went looking for the shark tank.
Eventually it emerged that were at the wrong hotel. The sign on the hotel next door sure looked like it was in front of this one and the now relieved and apologizing manager gave us a driver to take us next door. You could see that he was used to some pretty tough customers. Our driver told us rooms started around $600 and went up to $15,000 a night (plus minibar no doubt). Now our hotel would have been great but it looked like a dump after going to the Kampinski. Dern and dreck! The next day we tootled on down to the famous shore where people float around holding magazines showing how dry they are staying. ¬

The Dead Sea is far niftier than I would have guessed. First, it separates Israel from Jordan and there are no boats on the perfect sailing venue. Ahhh… well, they discourage boating as it generally ends up in gunplay. It really is salty. 8 times more than the ocean and you float like the dickens. It takes no effort to stay on the surface and you could swim to the Israeli side except your skin would fall off and you would probably be shot.

Finally back to Amman and to the airport. Our last hotel was like a prison in an open field surrounded by a fence with sentries at the gate. We decided to go for a walk and see the sunset. The hotel guard wanted to see our passports and check our visas before we could walk off the compound. Tyler soothed him by singing Happy Birthday in Arabic and he lets us free.

As the sun set over the ancient hills we agreed that we would miss these happy people with their mixed up currencies, taxis patched with plywood and high-fiving school children. Connecting out of Heathrow our plane flew over Iceland. Do I smell smoke? A few hours later they closed Europe.

TED 2010

TED (technology-entertainment-design) has been running 26 years but in the last couple of years it has morphed from a conference to a movement. Like Burning Man there are those in attendance and those wishing they were there. Unlike Burning Man there are many ways to participate other than going to the physical location. Two-way live webcast venues have sprung up all over the world from a packed theater in London from which the prime ministerial candidate of Britain, Robert Cameron, gave the opening speech to a parking lot in South Africa with a tremulous connection powered by a car battery.

What characterizes this movement? It’s liberal for sure. It’s intellectual. It’s save the worldly. And it’s elitist in the best Obama sense. Many of the attendees are the leaders of industry and education and several are post political such as Al Gore and Bill Clinton. George Bush was not at TED because he was the keynote at the United Grocers Convention in Las Vegas at the same time. Nothing wrong with groceries but really, GB.


Over four days there are about 100 speakers who speak for 3 to 18 minutes on topics ranging from Lego fantasies to the sweet song of Robert Gupta’s violin (youngest ever member of the LA Philharmonic) to Bill Gate’s giving us the lowdown on his latest passion: TerraPower, a subterranean nuclear candle that once buried is never opened and runs for 60 years consuming it’s own waste as it generates power.

So much has been written about this gathering that I, like Blaze Pascal, who famously said, “If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter”, will hit a few points that stood out for me and give you a sense of what it’s like but my real message is that you go online and see the videos of the presentations. ted.com

A lot of what goes on a TED is challenge to this grim reaper fellow we have heard so much about. Microbiologists, antislavery activists, farmers and ecologists tell of their very clever tools to beat cancer, social injustice, environmental degradation and boredom. Temple Graydon spoke eloquently about her campaign to create more humane slaughterhouses. I know, oxymoronic, but these enterprises do exist and this woman’s autism has made it possible for her to see things from the animals’ perspective. Her redesigns are now the industry standard.

A few of the presenters are crackpots and present completely unworkable ideas. Take Nathan Myhrvold’s bug zapper. This Gyro Gearloosian inventor demonstrated a laser cannon engineered to analyze every bug that passes a perimeter for bee or not beeness then incinerates just the malaria carrying female mosquito. Yes, it can tell the sex (must be the high heels). He delighted in showing us a slow-mo film of the little buggers being sent sizzling to their makers as he talked about plans to deploy this in Africa. This possible nutter is the ex chief scientist at Microsoft. They called Einstein crazy…well they actually didn’t but Myhrvold’s idea is probably unworkable. Still, he is still rightly called a genius. And speaking of Einstein, Stephen Wolfram is running for that position. The mathematician has a large and probably appropriately sized ego with his creation of Mathmatica and Wolfram Alpha. One of my interests is studying the history of mathematicians and this guy is the real thing. He claims to have invented a whole new kind of science and I for one believe him.

TED is held in the Long Beach Convention Center and for a week owns the town. Poor Long Beach, this is no Vegas but it sure feels great with us TEdsters spread out all over the lawns, in pavilions and scattered about the hotels and restaurants. We must have looked like the Eloi from H. G. Wells Time Machine but make no mistake the Morlocks are riding fast horses as many doomsayers at the conference remind.

Ironically, we fly in, flip on the lights and discuss alternative energy. We enter the lavish hall settling into the cushy seats and discuss poverty. We eat hamburgers while discussing the methane contribution of cattle and guzzle water as we lament the plastic in the oceans. Sure the cynical possibilities are endless at TED, but one could be motoring on Steven Forbes yacht Highlander with Glenn Beck. Instead, many at TED are putting themselves literally on the line by committing their lives to making the world a more graceful and just place.

No one typifies this better than Ken Robinson. This international thinker/educator laments the plight of education, his wife’s bizarre cooking and the unexplainable propensity of people to download videos of him. Delivered with humor Ken’s message is serious as he feels that we are educating the creativity out of children. On one hand he asks how it is that in ultracompetitive pre-K schools in the U.S. three-year olds show up with no resumes (“Is this all you have? You’ve had 36 months and you have done nothing!”), while in other places school’s not even an option. But TED is more than just the ivory tower observations of a bunch of fuzzyheaded intellectuals. Most folks who speak up at TED bring solutions.

One fellow, a lawyer, is vigorously trying to simplify insurance, tax, credit card and all sorts of official forms. Practical good stuff we all agree on. Nearly all, except for the lobbyists who strangle progress because many in business feel the best way to conduct business is to trick the customer. Glenn loves this idea, he does this for a living. Much of modern commercial life is based on sleight of hand. Supersizing, opt out instead of in, and deceptive marketplace herding.

TED is a patrician population peopled by protagonists. It is a multi-act play with thousands of key players. At one point I saw Meg Ryan talking to Ariana Huffington flanked by Al Gore and Matt Groening.

The movie star thing at TED is a really interesting. At one point I was in the on campus bookstore when Will Smith walked by. Now my son Tyler was in a critical scene in Pursuit of Happiness and I felt comfortable bringing up the connection. Smith is a very gracious guy and we had a nice exchange. Later I was hanging with a dance troop who had just performed. This team of dancers was the highlight. LXD, The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (you might have seen them on the Academy Award show) redefined dance for me. I am not a fan of ballet or modern or the twist, but these folks have something new with inspiration from classic, modern dance, street, break and gymnastics. The choreographer also does the show Glee and some of the cast members came on the last day. As we were talking Will Smith walked by and I said you should go say hi to Will. They were instantly shy so I called “Will, come say hi to these great people.” He came over and introduced himself, effusive with goodwill. As he left he cuffed me on the shoulder like we were old friends. At another point I found myself at a party. It was the cool kids’ party. I never got to go to the cool kids’ party in high school but here I was speaking to Larry Page. I told him I really liked his map system. He told me he likes my crab sandwich.

Sergi Brin told about Google’s travails with China. He said that Google pulled out because the situation had been getting worse. It seems there is a booming cottage industry hacking Google from China. That, and the censorship became untenable. He did speak about the future with the hope that things might turn around.

Jane McGonigal had an interesting take on the games we play. She directs game R & D with The Institute for The Future on Sand Hill. She claims that games make the players better people; that they go on epic journeys and with their urgent optimism they experience blissful productivity. These happy people have been playing World of WarCraft for over three million collective years so far and ahhh well, the truth probably lies somewhere between a spiral-eyed army of brain fried zombies and blissful nirvana.

Blaise Aruera y Arcas brought us virtual telepresence a few years back with Sea Dragon. Now he has laid AR on top of that and mashed it with maps to the edge of time. Makes sense right? No? No wonder. His presentation is simply mind-bending. You have to see it. Go to TED.com. There he takes us zooming to planet earth. We have all done it. As you enter Seattle you see the 3D buildings pop up, then they morph into street view but with real photos. Old news right? But then he takes you inside the Pike Street Fish Market with a 360x360 interior with the tagged photos all scraped from the internet laid on the previously banked photographics. During his talk Blaze phoned some friends who were videoing the interior of the market and this was merged, live, into the static collection of shots. This is AR or Augmented Reality. Then he zoomed out the back door and skyward rushing into outer space with MS’s World Wide Telescope and took us to the edge of the mapped universe. Over to you Google.

At TED there are two Chris Anderson’s. One is the imminent curator who has taken TED from an interesting conference and made it a kind of international university accessible to anyone with a connection. Then there is Chris Anderson the editor of Wired Magazine. Chris of Wired told us of his delight in envisioning the reduction of his print edition by, perhaps, 10-fold in the near future. He envisions the print version as a lush, tactile and collectable production for those of us who treasure such things as well as a computerized edition with embedded vid, elegant search and providing all the wiz that we expect from Wired. A mile deep, a mile wide and with a very long tale/tail.

Being on the scene at TED allows one to ask major players questions and get answers. I had read that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, anonymously bought the 10th Century Archimedes Codex (not to be confused with the Leonardo Codex). So I asked him. He said he had not. Cool. “…Hey, Bill did you buy…?”

This year’s TED Prizewinner was Jamie Oliver. This energetic chef has a scheme to teach food awareness and cooking to young children. I would hate to be a kid today trying to get healthy food to eat. The packaged stuff is so-o-o tasty! There are people in white coats staying up late to trick kids into liking food that is clearly going to kill them. Jamie says that nutrition classes are ineffective but actually putting the good food in young hands is key. His approach gives many kids their first opportunity to hold unprepared food. Simple, inexpensive and an idea that can change the world.

Michael Spector discussed aspects of his new book Denialism. He says that everyone is entitled to his own opinion but no one is entitled to his own facts. And we heard from Mandelbrot and Sarah Silverman; David Byrne, James Cameron and Svitak Adora. Have you heard her name? Well if not there is a lot about this remarkable girl online. She is a many times published author from poetry to pets. She speaks with authority and humor on many subjects and shows once again that each year the geniuses are getting younger. She’s 12.

At TED we discussed the issues big and smaller and ways to make the world more interesting; more beautiful and, in the end, even possible. From sea life to life on other planets and everything in between, TED is a good place to pick a passion. Ted.com

Archimedes, one first name like Cher

Eureka is Greek for “I have found it” (the California State motto). Archimedes was a 3rd century BC mathematician who was said to have run through the streets naked from his bath after he came up with the solution to a sticky problem the king of the small Greek state of Syracuse in Sicily presented him with. It seemed that the king was worried that his gold crown had been cut with silver and there was no way of finding out without melting the crown down. Archimedes came up with the idea that he could submerge the crown in water and by calculating the displacement discrepancies between the metals, he could come up with the answer. He measured the crown and found it had been adulterated. This story is almost certainly not true except for the fact that Archimedes did discover the physical laws of displacement and the three-dimensional mathematics of nature where previously we had only Euclid’s two-dimensional geometry. Archimedes didn’t have benefit of zero or negative numbers for his calculations and indeed the Greek numbering system was only slightly better for calculation than Roman numerals so he wrote his math as prose problems with diagrams. This most revered mathematician of the ancient world dealt with concepts of infinity, calculated pi to 4 places and told us that given a place to stand “I can move the world.”

Archimedes wrote of his discovery in hundreds perhaps thousands of letters and published a few books. Yes, 2300 years ago they did have books, all be it handwritten but they looked like modern bound books. The pages were of parchment (treated mammal skin) and there were few pages but the value when transmitting ideas to other places in space and time is incalculable.
But then in the Middle Ages teaching and learning fell away and most everything written that had been accumulated for nearly 2,000 years disappeared. Books were burned for heat, fed to goats or erased and scavenged for the paper or parchment. By the 10th Century it was hard to find the great works of old and by the 14th perhaps 1% was left. But it was in the 10th Century that one of the rare pockets of learning flourished. This was in the reformulated Easter Roman Empire called Byzantium. Headquartered in Constantinople (now Istanbul) there was for centuries in the Dark Ages near universal education and this was conducted in Greek. In schools they used the ancient Greek and even Roman texts to practice grammar and even penmanship. There was a strange conflict between the love of the Greek masters and the Christian doctrine holding sway at the time. In fact most of what we have of Archimedes was eventually funneled through one man, a Byzantine called Leo the Mathematician (about a thousand years ago). But for this fellow who gathered all he could of the Archimedean texts we might have had to discover the laws all over again.

In time all of Archimedes books in Greek were lost and what comes down to us are less than precise reiterations histories if his work further blurred by Latin translations. But then from a shrouded past surfaced a certain Christian eucharist in Istanbul in 1906. It was a 13th Century palimpsest of a much earlier work. A palimpsest is a book that has been washed or scraped of ink and written over for another purpose. But when the Christian words were washed away there remained a faint online of a book determined to be the work of Archimedes. It was a 10th century compellation of several lost Archimedean texts and his greatest work, On Floating Bodies. Even this work was at least a 4th generation copy but notably it was in Greek. archimedespalimpsest.org

A British historian tried to borrow the book from Istanbul in 1907 but they wouldn’t let it out of the country so he went there and photographed much of the book. Shorty thereafter The Ottoman’s morphed into the Turks and the book was lost.

Then in the late 1990’s the remaining pages (very badly damaged by mold in the 20th century) showed up for auction in New York. A legal battle raged with Turkey claiming it and a French family trying to sell it. In the end the family prevailed and an unnamed billionaire bought it for a mere two million. He then sent the pages to various labs around the world including SLAC here at Stanford to tease out every bit of this tiny thread of history.

The squandering of our historic riches in the Middle Ages is shocking, no? But I wonder if the next age will look back on our wonton ways and feel that the people of this time were far more irresponsible than feeding Euripides to farm animals with our desecration of the jungles and driving in cars that get 18mpg. We can well ask ourselves which is the greater crime.

airshipventures.com
Hey, who wants to fly into inner outer space for a few minutes for $200,000 and feel that great 8g rush on reentry? Humm…no not me. Well, how about drifting at a thousand feet over your neighborhood? Or over the ocean where you might see great whites and even shipwrecks in the shallows. Cruise past the Golden Gate Bridge and spot sailboats racing on a broad reach as you sail overhead. This is the effect from the Zeppelin Eureka, a dirigible based at Moffett Field.

How in the heck did this come to pass? Well you can credit Brian Hall and his wife Alexandra. Alex is the past director of the Chabot Space and Science Center and Brian founded and still has the helm of the successful software firm Mark/Space. One ride aboard the Zeppelin NT in Germany made Brian a believer. (from their website) “Designed exclusively for passenger operations, the Zeppelin NT (“New Technology”) is unlike any other airship in the world. Engineered with the best in German technology, the airship's precise handling, and quiet, spacious cabin with oversized windows and restroom were designed for luxurious passenger operations. Realizing that there was no experience like this, and no airship technology like this in the U.S., Brian immediately embarked on his next business venture.” Alex grew up in England near the dirigible hangers at Cardington and all her life she wanted to be an astronaut. She would have made a good one but it turned out she wasn’t quit tall enough so with the airship she says she has had to have an altitude adjustment.

California has a deep history of lighter than air because it was at Moffett filed that the Airship Macon was based in the huge Hanger Number 1, which is still there. In the 1930’s airships represented the wave of the future and the people of Sunnyvale voted to sell the land that is Moffett to the federal government for $1 if they would locate the ship there. The program was not a success but the tiny air station grew and around it prospered early avionics firms such as Fairchild Raytheon and Varian. It can be contended that one of the reasons we have Silicon Valley as we know it today is because of the Macon program.
The Eureka is a 246 long dirigible. It is made by the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnika 100+ year old firm that has been involved with aircraft and engine manufacturing for over a century. It is true that the Hindenburg was a Zeppelin but it used flammable hydrogen for lift where modern ships use inert helium. What makes it a dirigible is the internal skeleton as opposed to a blimp that is a big balloon. The skeleton allows the envelop to hold a very low pressure, just over 1 psi so if (a nearly impossible to conceive of) breech the helium would take hours to escape. The ride in this ship is similar to a hot air balloon but one you can drive at up to 70 mph and basically cruse where you wish.

I went recently with a group of friends and it was nothing short of magical. It is equal parts modern aviation with 1930’s pizzazz yielding a singular experience so visceral as to make it hard to describe. As you coast over the land it is staggering to see the amount of stuff we have built and when you coast over the estates from Saratoga to Woodside the grandeur is awe inspiring. You see dogs running for Frisbees, countless folks waving and lines of cars and rapid transit snaking in all directions. Over the mountains you see running deer and hikers stopping to look up at you. Over the ocean you see the silt roiling down from the creeks and if you are lucky enough to go over Anno Nuevo you see the Elephant seals in the multitude looking at you in curious wonder. One of life’s great thrills is to gaze down upon the fabled Golden Gate and see the majesty and unique character of San Francisco. You can see clearly the cable cars and the vital pulse of the city. But mostly you see folks looking up wishing they were where you are.

It isn’t all just sightseeing with the folks at Airship Ventures. In fact this summer there is a whale survey planned for the San Juan Islands around Seattle. The ship will make the first trip of a Zeppelin from Southern California to Canada. Alex and Brian have the youthful exuberance of the barnstormers who popularized aviation a hundred years ago (but with an appropriate eye toward safety). So they want to make it interesting by taking voyages to the fun places like Catalina and Hearst Castle.

The ship will be spending some time in the LA area each month in the first half of 2010, and will back here otherwise. You can even buy a ticket for that very special longer cruise along the coast - 8 hours to or from LA isn’t fast, but route 1 from the air must be tremendous fun!

In spite of the recession they have been getting solid bookings, including many private charters for parties, corporate events, and even a wedding! I had seen the ship flying around for several months before going aboard. I now wonder why I waited because I see the Bay Area in a whole new way; a more intimate and grander place.

Don’t think you’ll get around to it sometime or when you finally decide to fly there might be a year long waiting list like they have in Germany! You need to have this on your New Years Resolution list! My advice is go to the website airshipventures.com and book now.

Alwayson 3rd annual VC conference

Alwayson 3rd annual VC conference

The socially mediated wireless Chinese cloud. This about sums up the tech industry today. Run, run at full speed and if you stop to tie your shoe you end up at the back of the pack. Dern!

Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark Venture Partners, was the keynote speaker at the AlwaysOn venture summit and he looked out over the crowd and said, in essence, that up to half of the venture firms will be folding in the next little while and that little while is a very little in this new rat race. Oh heck, just when I thought I was winning the rat race they brought in faster rats!

The reason for this was not obvious to me until he explained the Yale Model of institutional investing. It seems that the endowments of some of the powerhouse universities and other institutions saw fat profits in what has been called “alternative investments” these being the illiquid ones from timber and real estate to venture funds. Then came the crash in values all around the world and the endowments were stuck with assets they couldn’t sell or had to dump at a huge loss. In fact, Harvard has been one of the hardest hit (11 billion down from 26 billion) and they have had to cut back on some of the ivy covering the buildings. This is quite true as there is a multibillion-dollar science building that has been halted in mid construction. Ouch.

And some entrepreneurs are looking for funding from places other than venture firms for funding. Because it takes less capital to launch a firm today than it did ten years ago the angel investor is pretty busy. Not only that but there is funding from large corporations who are becoming more vertical like Cisco and even the CIA, as they fund projects that can benefit them. It doesn’t’ stop there. HP is doing it but, get this, so is Best Buy and Proctor and Gamble. This makes some sense but it is strange to think that you can go to a Best Buy and pick up much of the gear to launch your startup and they will pay you to take the stuff.

I met the top brand manager at Proctor and Gamble back in early 2000 when Tim Koogle and Jerry Yang had the bizarre notion that I would make an ideal keynote speaker at a national Yahoo conference where brand managers would come from all over and explore how they could be part of the Internet revolution. Tech companies were side by side with Taco Bell. How do you put a taco online you ask? The answer is you couldn’t then but now they can with the new social tools like maps and Twitter. P and G actually opened an office on Sand Hill in 1999 but soon closed it. Now they are back and their cash is the old fashioned kind, large and liquid.

I see the venture industry as having followed the same path as the motion picture industry in the last century. Early on there were a smattering of small studios and then bam, a gold rush. But most studios lost money and closed, leaving a few big operations and a lot of small independents. Like the film business the venture business had always been about home runs and as in baseball most pitches do not score points.

David Cowan at Bessemer Venture Partners said that one thing limiting his ability to uncover and fund new ideas is that the top VC’s are overloaded with inventory and sitting on all the boards as well as providing the guidance that they have been brought aboard to do takes a tremendous amount of time. Leave the nest already! And since new deals are slower in arriving it becomes hard to justify bringing more folks in into the venture firm.

David raised another interesting point that in the current climate there are a great number of clean tech companies being funded and unlike software they are building tangible products that take a lot more money to build. If you extend the capital requirement graph of all the clean tech firms you will see a monster delta between the amount of possible capital and the need. So most of these firms are just not sustainable. Deepak Kamra of Canaan Partners brought up the fact that it takes 9 years from inception to an exit. During this period follow on capital and VC expertise has to be continually pumped into the startup.

Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Partners talked about one of his favorite subjects, China. Tim is the ultimate free trader and he and his partners were an early investor in Baidu, the Chinese search engine and the only one that gives Google a run for its money. Where a lot of American business folks approach the Chinese dragon with trepidation, Tim respects them as fearless, confident and tough. He feels that we have in them worthy partners that will make us better if we stand up in the marketplace with the same attitude.

But with all this, the mood is one of cautious optimism. Back at the beginning of the decade the VC and techfolk in the Valley seemed a bit depressed and even though it has picked up some in the last few years it is still very hard to make money in the VC game. This is because the upside is not realized until there is a way to fully capitalize the company. In the real world most everything is about showing up but in the VC world it’s about the exit. There has to be a stock offering or the firm has to be sold before there is dime one to the VCs and these events are far less common than 10 years ago. Sometimes neither strategy is possible and the firm is held as private equity with a much slower trickle of profits from operating income. Of course the worst scenario is that the firm folds and generally all is lost at that point.
In The Valley you hear a lot of talk about failures being celebrated. You hear people actually saying it is good to fail that it teaches valuable lessons and so on. This is crap. Sure you can learn from failure like if you slam our fingers in a door you learn not to do it but believe me the better lessons are from success. It is far better to be like the founders of Google. Succeed at the first thing you try. Now that’s a lesson!

Back at the AlwaysOn conference I found myself surrounded by biz school types. Now I feel about advanced degrees for business about like I view cooking school for chefs. The real world has far more to teach than business school. But if you have time to kill by all means hang out in school. If you have an MBA and you write about business and you are full of hot air people will think you’re an idiot. But if you haven’t got an MBA and you run a restaurant and you write about business you are merely considered colorful.

So what’s with these VC types anyway? Are they a bunch of wealthy geniuses who have offered up the capital to bring us a new age, an age as significant as when Gutenberg pulled his first page from the press but muuuuch faster? Well yes, that’s about it.

In fact a little history is warranted. Gutenberg was a failed mirror polisher back in the 1540’s. His idea was to manufacture and sell penitent mirrors (a small polished metal disc on a stick) which were taken to witness a holy relic and, like a nonworking camera, the pilgrim brought the image back to his village. Even the limited mind of a Dark Ages plowman wouldn’t fall for that and the business tanked worse than Microsoft Vista. But his second invention was combining a wine press, easily replicable lead type, oil based ink and a grand vision for a new Bible. He went to angel investors for the research money and in 18 months produced his first page. In short order he printed the most valuable book of all time and everything changed. Venture money made this possible so if you sometimes think that angels and VCs are as useless as shower curtain-ring salesmen just think about how long it will be till you next pick up a device that has been made possible by the quick wits of the entrepreneur and the swashbuckling risk takers on Sand Hill Road.

So today there are reduced expectations and the VCs job is harder. The parties at the end of these conferences are sober, dignified affairs and VC’s look almost dull compared to the old days. I well recall back in the 90’s when angel investor extraordinaire Ron Conway held a charity auction and one item, golf with Tiger Woods with Warren Buffet as the caddy, went for over $720,000. Ahhhh the fun we had.
alwayson.goingon.com to see the conf. video