It is great to be home again and we can’t wait to go back. Flying back into Silicon Valley from Back East with – mostly – Maine calibrated eyes, is slightly surprising. Both Boston’s Logan Airport and San Jose’s Mineta Airport are nearly new but that is all that is the same. At Logan, it is hard to find a place to plug in a computer, at Mineta, every seat has a plug (except the chairs in the Meditation Room across from the gate).

Wandering around the Northeast – New England? Down East? – I missed my five o’clock cappuccino, in San Jose, we passed three espresso places between the gate and picking up our luggage. When we left Boston – near noon -it was in the low 50’s, at San Jose, it was in the low 70’s at 6:30.

The most pleasant surprise was the space, the vistas when we got off the plane. To a great extent this is because of our topography; there are mountains to have vistas of. Waiting for the shuttle, to the east was the Diablo Range, pale orange in the fading light, and to the west were the Santa Cruz Mountains, soft in the haze. In New Hampshire, we would drive for miles and see nothing but the next quarter-mile of road. A beautiful quarter-mile but no view until we crossed a bridge.

The West is just plain opener than the East. Not just long vistas open, but it feels more open to change. I don’t think that Silicon Valley is a coincidence, I think that it is a result. The East is weighted down by the past – of course, if you are from the East, you might say grounded by the past and both are right – there are ghosts everywhere, waiting behind the present.

On the way home, Michele and I were already making plans to go back. We were a little too late this year

and the trip was way too short.