Category Archives: Travel

I found it very rewarding and helpful to keep a travel blog when I was in Zurich last summer. I will do same over the next 15 months during which I will spent bursts of time overseas. If you’d like to follow my adventures from the road check out my new sister blog Ben’s Gap Year Travel Adventures. Here’s the XML feed. I will, of course, post highlights and the occassional dispatch here on my main blog.

I’m looking for shelter and conversations in different parts of Western Europe. (Asia and Latin America, later.) On the conversation front, anyone in entrepreneurship, business, academia, journalism, etc.

My new friend Jackie Danicki has shone a light on tons of interesting people in that part of the world. I hope to meet them and others!

That’s a new record for me. I’ve also never arrived at an airport on-time around 1:45 AM, which I did this morning.

Six flights, six fights for exit-row seats, six bags of peanuts, six segments of kneeing the person in front of me to dissuade them from pushing back their seat any further.

I’m exhausted.

I’ve lived in San Francisco for 18 years. I’ve spent far too little time in other interesting cities. The past couple weeks I’ve hung out in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Chicago, Boulder, and Denver with friends and family. I head to LA this week (I’ve been there plenty). I love all these places. (Don’t you have school classes? Yes, but between spring break and "sick days," I get by.)

Wednesday morning I saw Dick Costolo in Chicago, CEO of FeedBurner, who’s a nice and sharp guy. The FeedBurner physical office reflects their market (RSS and blogs): it’s totally open, transparent, and equal. In other words, no offices, no cubes, just desks. After our chat Eric Olson of VentureWeek and new FeedBurner employee introduced himself to me — it’s always great to put faces to voices! Chicago is an awesome city, especially the people who were all super friendly.

I spent the rest of the afternoon, night, and morning taking care of some personal business which I will write about later.

Next I flew to Denver and taxi’d to Boulder where I caught a panel on how screwed up the patent system is, especially for start-ups. My pal Brad Feld was on it and afterwards I had sushi with him and his wife Amy. I pondered rolling out my sleeping bag on a Boulder sidewalk, but decided instead to follow my gracious hosts home and crashed in their guest room. Good call. The bed was 100x better than a busted futon I slept on a night earlier, and I got to wake up to an amazing sight:

The next morning I hung out at the Mobius VC office, got briefed on global warming, neuroscience, applied psych in business, and libertarianism by Dave Jilk, and cried myself 14 tissues in the bathroom since Seth Levine rejected me in favor of frozen rain. (It’s ok Seth, I still love you, but no outbound link for you this time.)

My last stop was Denver, where I visited an old friend who I have done a poor job of keeping up with. He’s had a tough four years of high school (three different schools, three different cities). It was good to see him, check out his public school, and hear what he’s thinking for college.

I returned home happy, grateful for the mentors in my life, energized, and with much work.

Nick Kristof’s column yesterday (TimesSelect) in the NYT spoke to me — each and every word. It’s about why every student should earn academic credit for taking a gap year after high school, traveling the world, experiencing cultures with a backpack, and so forth. With the timing of his column, you’d think I paid him!

Friends of Ben agree whole-heartedly with Kristof.

Thanks to my friend Jeff Maurone for alerting me to the column before I had a chance to read the paper.

It’s time for me to see globalization — a topic I have read and written so much about — up close and personal. I may spend up to two months abroad this summer. In the next 15 months, I plan to see Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. This summer, though, I’m starting where most people start: Europe. I don’t like the fact that everyone flocks to the same five cities, but there’s a reason for this after all — the Eurorail makes it easy and cheap.

1. Do you have friends or family in Europe who could provide me shelter and/or local expertise for a day or two when I’m out there?

2. Do you have friends in business, technology, journalism, or academia who I can hook up with to have some stimulating conversations? (I speak English and decent Spanish).

If so, send me an email. Thanks a lot.

If you want to provide tips or insights into specific parts of my itinerary, or on travel in general, hold your horses for the moment. I’ll be posting more on this blog and on my companion travel blog in the next couple weeks.