I’m a year late at a true update. So, as 2007 comes to a close, it’s high time for a general update on my new scene – especially since I’ve not sent out holiday cards. Some of you have been following along here (thanks!), but most of you haven’t had the time, so here’s an abbreviation.

I exited fama PR last spring and spent the summer of ’06 in Boston enjoying sweet drinks, Atlantic sushi, the Big Dig and sunshine. I then went to Maine (home sweet home) for PopTech in October, and shipped all my stuff to California on a hunch. Then I wandered around Europe for a while: London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Budapest, Vienna, Bratislava, Paris… then, home to Maine again for holiday time with family and old friends (hard to believe it’s that time again). Then, I took the only material possession I had remaining on the east coast – my little Audi S4 monster – and spent a few months driving it around the lower 48, taking pictures and getting speeding tickets. I made extended stops in places like Austin and Tucson.

When bored, you can peek at some pictures I made along the way.

This past April, I landed in coastal Los Angeles – in Venice – a part of the world I really love. I signed a one-year lease on a neat loft space (which you can also see in the pictures above). Venice is funky and eclectic – showing scars from a much more difficult past and offering quite a neat mix: crack shacks, art galleries, celebrity homes and everything in between. My place is just a few blocks from the ocean and legendary Abbot Kinney Boulevard. The exterior design around here is bold and vibrant, and the architecture gracefully blends Gaia, humankind, lifestyle and technology. Venice has a zeitgeist of unapologetic live-and-let-live individuality – just the right blend of artists, old hippies, good food, music, young babes, technology, culture and creative expression. Besides, don’t you just have to love a place with street names like Zeno, Horizon, Ozone, Breeze and Clubhouse?

Yanks with the wrong idea of Los Angeles: you’ve got the wrong idea. I have hummingbirds, crisp clean air, and palm and citrus trees. I never deal with traffic unless I get the strange idea to drive into the city. I’m treated to hours of afternoon sun that coats everything with gold. The sunsets seem to linger all evening, and are so warm and comforting they could be baked into pies. They’re often followed by cool Pacific breezes that wrap around you like a sheet as you doze off to sleep. I already find myself hoping our fragile economy might be good enough to me that I could someday call both coasts home.

I have my own lemon tree inside. It will make striped lemons that are pink inside. They’ll probably make the best lemon drop cocktails within 100 miles.

I’ve already bought two bikes (one of which was stolen in Santa Monica last week; good story) and am biking a great deal. In Venice, it’s either a bike or a dog and I’m too selfish to want the latter. I can bike almost anywhere I need to go, and have access to dozens of miles of oceanfront bike trails that run from Torrance Beach north to the foot of Temescal Canyon.

I have a good batch of friends here – some from years past and some newly made – and am working on more. I’ve found some great restaurants, museums, hiding places, hiking trails, and miscellaneous other places that keep me discovering and feeling alive.

When I first did this – moved out here, that is – I felt pretty frightened. I’m a big risk taker but this nonetheless felt really scary. I spent a month or two with my head down making house and home and as things began to fall into place the fear subsided. I am so glad I did this – I feel really lucky and happy and alive.

I’ve been writing a lot, commentating, and making pictures. Professionally, I’ve been playing in the space where innovation and communication intersect and have also invested in a couple of young companies. I recently helped a friend with the public launch of an exciting company called EdgeCast. I plan to continue helping them, and will launch my own consultancy in the coming months to give me a corporate umbrella under which to operate all this stuff. At that point I’ll tell you about some of the other ideas brewing.

I’ve been volunteering as a mentor at the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation, helping young entrepreneurs move their ideas from dream stage to reality.

This will be my second winter outside New England, and I’ve acclimated (or de-acclimated) quite quickly. The cool, early-winter evenings here feel cold to me although they pale in comparison to a New England winter night. While I don’t miss the cold, I do miss the rich, light-painted sky of those New England nights. Even this far from the city, there’s still too much light pollution for me to get the gorgeous sky I’d see at home or out in the desert.

To all you east coasters – if you need a break from winter, I have a nice big guest room here that’s open for visitors (but booking fast!)

I hope you all had an enriching 2007. My best to you and yours for the holidays and 2008. I hope that if you haven’t been in touch, you will be soon.

Love and light
-a

• better language skills
• one of my prescription medications
• good international cell phone service (tip: bring an unlocked GSM phone and put a prepaid SIM card in it.)

There were moments when I wish I had…

• additional lenses for my camera (specifically a wide-angle and a telephoto.) But these are bulky, heavy and only occasionally useful. So, I’m glad I settled on my good-for-most-situations Nikkor 18-70.
• a tripod
• a comprehensive map of wi-fi spots in each city I visited.

I am glad I brought…

• my Doc Martens – comfortable for long walks, can pass for casual or dressy. These were the only shoes I wore – all day, every day. Highly recommended.
• my super-heavy, long Ralph Lauren leather jacket. I actually left this in my car as I departed for the airport and then went back for it. This was such a great move. My original concern was that it would be a useless heavy thing to carry, but I ended up wearing it almost every day (this was mid-Autumn.) It has a bunch of pockets (many that zip or snap closed,) and it turned out to be an ideal travel jacket. The added bonus is that it makes me look like a badass mofo when wandering lost and drunkenly through alleys in cities where I do not speak the language.
• three great pairs of jeans (remember: pack very light, do laundry)
• a Kensington All-In-One Travel Plug Adapter
• my Nikon D200
• my iPod
• my MacBook Pro
• USB cables to charge my cell phone, iPod and Jabra JX10 headset through my laptop (much lighter than AC chargers)
• Skype
• my manners and some extra humility
• DK Travel’s Eyewitness Travel Guide to Europe and their European Phrase Book (note to publisher – please offer an electronic version of these, especially the Travel Guide; wonderful but heavy books.)
• my Maine State Credit Union Visa (had to dust it off) and Fidelity Visa debit card – two rare pieces of plastic that don’t charge fat premiums for international transactions.

Knowing what I know now, I would not have…

• spent three (rainy) days in Budapest
• moved around so much. I loved the flexibility and mystery – but I did pay a price in efficiency and enjoyment. (Tip: consider picking a city as a travel hub and find a short-term apartment/room rental there.)
• brought a jacket and a few shirts that I never wore
• done the whole rail pass thing. If you’re a 20 year old student on a budget, fine. But if you’re a little older and have some money, I don’t care what they tell you about flexibility, first class travel, and the like – don’t bother. When you want to take a train somewhere (and I highly recommend it in many circumstances) just show up a little early and walk up and buy the ticket. Also, don’t rule out short-hop flights around Europe. They are often very reasonably priced, even without an advance purchase.

I’m also happy that I….

• traveled alone
• blogged a lot along the way
• made a lot of photographs
• connected with locals, through friends and through the ‘net, who were willing to meet me, show me around, and generally take me under their wing.
• stayed away from tourist areas as much as possible. I realize sometimes it’s almost unavoidable (Eiffel Tower, etc.) – but you will get zero sense of a regional culture by congregating where the traveling masses do. For example, I doubt you’re going to meet a single local within a half mile of Amsterdam’s Centraal Station – but many Americans I’ve spoken to who’ve been to Amsterdam never left that area (and still think they have experienced it and have a well-informed opinion of the place.)

My favorite places were…

• Amsterdam
• Bratislava
• Paris

I was also told numerous times that I did not “look like an American,” which I took as a compliment even prior to seeing what American tourists in Europe look and act like (sorta like they do at Disney World, only much more confused and exasperated – and if that doesn’t help you pick them out, just listen for loud people.)

Long and short of it: do it – go. Prepare, pack very light, open your eyes, go off the beaten path and be polite. You’ll be glad you did.

The bar was lit with trippy red lights (whoda thunk?) and there was a woman at the bar with her dog underfoot. The dog would be really quiet for a while then just start barking. He really disliked one of the waiters.

A man who was talking to dog-lady looked a lot like Columbo, and when a flower vendor entered the restaurant selling roses, Columbo bought the whole bunch and started handing them out to patrons. He gave me a white one and a red one. He gave a pair to two girls sitting two tables away from me and they were coldly dismissive, took the roses, and set them off to the side. There was a Mischa Barton lookalike (yum) one table beyond them, and she smoked a few cigarettes while her boyfriend ate dinner. For some reason, Columbo didn’t give them any roses.

I had a mushroom risotto that was excellent, a cosmopolitan cocktail with a glow-stirrer in it, and (as mentioned) creme brûlée for dessert. Fantabulous, all of it.

I did a great deal of walking around today. Jardins du Trocadero, Eiffel Tower, walked along the Seine for a while, spent a good chunk of the afternoon exploring the Louvre, then walked through the Jardin des Tuileries and back up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe.

A few pictures from last night and today are now up.

Anyway, I choose a smoking compartment because the non-smoking compartments are stuffed full, and I’m hoping to spread out and get some writing done. I am listening to my iPod as I settle in.

The smoker in my compartment, an older gentleman in a suit, faces me and will nurse a girlie cig every 45 minutes or so. His tie looks like one of those loaner clip-ons they give you at Sears Portrait Studio. His teeth are smoker teeth. He has a gold pinkie ring. He and the train attendant are some kind of buddies and laugh and exchange cracks in German as the attendant checks our tickets. The smoke from his girlie cigarette slowly drifts toward the window then gets caught up in the whirlwind from the wall-mounted vents, swirls quickly upward and disappears. I debate offering him one of my super-chic Nat Sherman cigs but think better of it – them’s for hot chicks (although I did make an exception and give one to Casey on the train to Vienna.) He reads a magazine, but the way his eyes cross it sort of looks as if he’s looking past the magazine and right at me. With his right eye, anyway. It becomes more than a little odd to look back at him while Eminem and Saint Dog rage into my ears….

I’m packin heat, I ain’t unprepared…

As I settle in and decide to do some writing, I notice that the outlet into which I’ve plugged my laptop is poorly grounded, so if i let my arm touch the steel frame of the compartment while I’m writing, I get a mild shock. Nice.

No more games… tear this motherfuckin’ roof off like two dogs caged…

The Austrian countryside is lovely. Uniquely-constructed homes make up small, cozy villages that hug the countryside. The homes are colorful and bright, but choose from the same limited palette. They are all laid-back colors, though – soft browns and beiges dance with the blues and yellows of an Easter basket. Resting against the gentle gray and blue of the sky, it all looks like it would be quite comfortable in the window of a Hallmark store.

More windmills – they seem to be synchronized to the music I’m listening to – and despite their steely look, they somehow fit – unlike the occasional industrial building that works about as well as a pimple on the face of a princess. Two small lakes whizz past, probably man made, almost as blue as the Easter-egg houses.

What really does look out of place are the high-tension power lines that stripe across the hillside. For some reason they bother me. Part of it is my photographer – they make almost any scene impossible to photograph well.

Then, as it has done so often during these past few weeks, it began to rain. We arrived in Munich shortly thereafter, and according to the schedule I had 9 minutes to reach my connecting train. However, my train was precisely 9 minutes late, and I was primed at the door to jump when we came to a halt. At that moment an old lady asked me to help her get her bag out of the train. I quickly grabbed her bag, lowered it to the platform, and ran for my train. Oddly enough, I made it.

For a while I had a compartment all to myself. But halfway through the journey a man in a plaid sportcoat and a woman in a black business suit joined me in my compartment. The woman almost immediately began talking on her cell phone and the plaid-coated man couldn’t have been more exasperated about it. He had some very old books and was trying to get some kind of writing done. He seemed to be practicing to give a speech, or was writing a song, or poem, or something – because his mannerisms were that of someone rehearsing. But, he did not like our seat-mate, Chatty Cathy. If dirty looks were currency, this was France’s richest man. He would occasionally look at me, curious either why I wasn’t equally upset or better yet, why I wasn’t doing anything about it. After her third conversation began, he got up in a huff, grabbed his things and disappeared just after flashing me a final look as if to say, good luck with this scene, man.

While we were in Germany, the announcements were made in German and English. Now that we’re in France, they are only made in French. I am fluent in NO foreign languages (although at this moment, French is not a foreign language, is it?) But I am OK with French, having spent a few years toying around with it in high school. I can dissect it when I hear it, I can do alright when I read it, and can even pull together a sentence or three. We’ll see how I do.

And after what seemed like forever, we roll to a stop in Paris. J’arrive!