Bluefield, West Virginia

Years ago, I helped start a five-state alliance of incubator executive directors in the corners of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky and the tiniest tip of West Virginia. The MountainSouth Incubator Alliance (MSIA) has the same footprint at the MountainSouth World Trade Center, which I helped launch. MSIA rotates meetings between incubators and this month’s is in Bluefield, WV.

If you travel I-77 North from the Carolinas or Virginia, you’ll find the dual towns of Bluefield, VA and Bluefield, WV straddling the state line as you enter West Virginia.

There are two colleges in the Bluefields: Bluefield College is a Baptist-based four-year college in Viriginia, while Bluefield State College is a traditionally black college that sits across the railroad tracks from downtown Bluefield, WV.

Bluefield State College’s Research and Development Corporation has an incubator in the former AEP headquarters building on the edge of downtown Bluefield, WV. The incubator is a member of the MSIA and its executive director, Gerald “Jerry” James is president of MSIA this year. While I’ve not been an incubator exec for about two years, MSIA continues to grow, with each incubator focusing on their unique strength; I enjoy attending the meetings when I can.

The meeting this month is in Bluefield, WV, and Jerry mentioned that he had a second building that including rooms if we wanted to stay the night prior. Turns out it’s a former hotel that has been turned into a student residence.

I arrived in Bluefield around 6pm and checked in. While the room was spartan, as it’s designed to be furnished by the long-term stay student, it had the basics: dorm-sized fridge, microwave, couch, bed and computer desk.

I had to ask for a shower curtain, which the staff was very helpul in obtaining. Once that was in place, I took off to explore the Bluefields.

After dinner, when I got back to the hotel / student residence, I noticed a light on the walkway as I approached my room. I didn’t remember leaving on a light, let alone a powerful light, but then I got to the room and realized that I’d left the blinds open and the light on.

No problem, I thought, glad I’d not left my laptop in full view. When I went in, though, I realized that I couldn’t close the blinds, and I didn’t want to disturb the staff.

So, as I do from time to time if things don’t feel right, I rearranged the furniture to block the “view”.

The picture below is the pre-arranged view, before realizing the blinds wouldn’t close.

Marin and Point Reyes Coastline

Sir Francis Drake seems to be every where I turn these days. Living on the Tennessee - North Carolina border, words like Virginia and Roanoke are in constant use; the movie Elizabeth: Golden Age played on the plane on the way back from Barcelona; and today I find out that Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, stretching from 101 to the tip of the Point Reyes National Seashore, is named appropriately.

Back down along Route 1, after a stay at Timber Cove with fabulous blueberry pancakes and a spinach omlette for breakfast, and a quick check of the map to see if a drive inland to 101 would yield a shorter trek to the Point Reyes area on the way back to Silicon Valley (no, for the record, it makes no difference in time or windingness).

Point Reyes, like other areas, has plenty of dairy cattle. At times along Route 1, signs warn of cattle every so many miles, and at one point there was a cow contentedly chewing in a pocket between a cliff and the road that was not much bigger than she was.

The fact that Point Reyes is a national seashore, though, means the farms are called “Historic Farm F”, “Historic Farm G” and so on - seven historic farms on a very large penisula. The 30 minute drive past cows and historic farms finally brings one out to Drake’s Bay.

Before Drake flipped his cape to cover a puddle, before he circumnavigated the globe, even before he helped defeat the Spanish Armada, Drake stopped in this cove to repair his ship after a futile attempt to find the Northwest Passage. He sat here for two months, trading with Indians, raiding the Spanish and preparing to set out across the Pacific - a sea the English had no knowledge of save for captured Spanish trade route maps.

He also used the time to dedicate this part of the world as New Albion, a name that stuck until just prior to California entering the United States. It’s a bit of irony that he helped drive the Spanish out of this area, and then had his name for it stripped away so that Spanish names could be used as California gained statehood.

“Oh, but just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage . . . ” - Stan Rogers

Sonoma Coastline

A former sheep ranch is home now to a gated community that - supposedly - is about two hours north of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco.

In reality, if one takes Route 1 along the coast all the way up to Sea Ranch, it would take almost 3 hours. This “off season” time of year there’s precious little open in the way of stores, gas stations and restaurants once you pass Point Reyes Station, about an hour into the drive.

The goal was to go up the coastline an undetermined distance to “see what they could see” and possibly to meet up with an entrepreneur and visionary whom I often work with. He lives in Mendocino - when he’s home. I didn’t realize quite how far that really is from Silicon Valley.

In reality, Friday night was a stop-over in Jenner, where the Russian River meets the Pacific, at a neat little inn with cottages that perch on the hill above the river. With names like Mill Cottage, Brambleberry, Xanadu and Orca, the rooms and cottages provide a variety of amenities, including breakfast.

Since lunch wasn’t so easy to find, the Jenner Inn and Cottages hostess suggested a place “up the road about 20” that served lunch - the Timber Cove Inn - that was also the home to the Bufano Peace Statue. Arriving there after about another hour, including a one-lane road that was being used while a slide area in the redwoods was being repaired, the fact that lunch was not being served was readily apparent. This hostess suggested going on a bit more to Sea Ranch, which had both a continual serving of food, from the bar menu in the mid-afternoon, which is now was. It also had, she promised, a beach that was accessible.

Both turned out to be the case. The Sea Ranch is a former sheep ranch that is now a “gated” community with its own postal code, complete with the old-school postal boxes (with glass inset) that are rapidly being replaced by the silver metal monsters. Wonderful food served in a sun room, followed by a walk to the beach, then a round of hot chocolate back in the lodge.

A place to explore again.