I spent a couple of days in Menlo Park and Palo Alto. Here are ten random thoughts:

1) The area around Stanford University is among the most beautiful in the world. What a wonderful place physically, geologically, geographically, meteorologically.

2) I grew up in the bay area, lived in Orange County from 1996 to 2005 and now live in Seattle. The traffic between San Jose and Menlo Park seems at least as bad as the worst I’ve seen in southern CA or Seattle.

3) Does anyone else think there are some unusual parallels between Sand Hill Road and the Silverado Trail in Napa’s wine country? The terroir is similar. The ratio of development to open land is similar. Even the signage has the same emotional appeal. Along Sand Hill Road you see the names of legendary valley VC firms that have backed the pioneers of the software industry and the Internet. Along Silverado Trail you see the names of wineries producing some of the world’s finest wines.

4) The valley has the smartest work attire. The east coast is suit and tie. Southern CA is monotone black, white and gray or jeans and dress shirt. Seattle is socks and sandals. But the valley is just sharply dressed, plain-front slacks, collared shirt with sleeves rolled up, ready to get work done. I think I saw only a few guys in ties my entire time. They looked out of place. Oddly enough, I saw almost as few people wearing jeans.

5) Downtown Palo Alto is phenemonal. It reminds me of a larger, but just as quaint and historic downtown as in San Luis Obispo. Most restaurants offer free wifi. There’s abundant street parking. It’s clean. Lots of upscale restaurants and shops. The University art shop is awesome. I bought gifts for three of my kids here.

6) I saw Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in one of the coffee shops in downtown Palo Alto. In case he frequents it often, I won’t tell you which one. He had no entourage. Just Mark and one other guy getting a cup of joe. Nice to know he gets his caffeine one cup at a time, just like the rest of us.

7) The 2:10 flight between Seattle and San Jose is the perfect length. Just long enough to get some work done, but not too long to numb your rear.
Before flying down to the valley I ran into good friend and Internet marketer extraordinaire Todd Sawicki in the Seattle airport. It was about 5:30 a.m. That’s about 3 hours before Todd normally gets up. Regardless we had a good chat about how savvy CIOs are managing the grassroots consumption of peripheral software-as-a-service and consumer-to-enterprise software in their organizations. I’ll write a full post on this topic soon.

9) If you’re ever looking for an address on El Camino Real - don’t. I drove up and down looking for my hotel. Finally I called the hotel and received guidance. The desk attendant told me the numbers on El Camino Real repeat and don’t stay in sequence. Apparently it has something to do with it being the oldest highway at something like 150 years old.

10) Forget about Google earning street cred for blanketing Mountain View with free, ubiquitous high-speed wifi access. They’d get more goodwill by offering to wifi up San Jose airport. It’s ubsurd for airports to charge for wifi. Savvy travelers will start choosing airports the way they do hotels - by only choosing ones that offer free, unhindered wifi access.

And one bonus thought…

11) I’m a passionate 49er fan (remember, I grew up in the bay area in the Walsh/Montana/Rice era). I was looking forward to picking up a new 49er baseball cap while in the bay area as one can’t be found in Seattle. Surprisingly none could be found in Palo Alto either. Are the 49ers so bad you can’t buy any garb in the bay area either? I’ll be back in the valley next week. If you know where the 49er fan shop is, let me know.

Oh wait, one more…

12) I was sitting in my seat on the plane at about 8:00 p.m. tonight, waiting to depart San Jose for Seattle. For about 45 to 50 seconds the plane shook violently. It was as though one of those little buddy trucks couldn’t decouple from the plane and was herking and jerking to free itself. The flight attendant next to me said she’s felt those little trucks crash full speed into a plane and it hardly budges the plane. It turns out it the shaking was due to a 5.6 magnitude quake right under San Jose. Yeah, I miss California.