We drive 22 hours from Boulder, USA, to El Potrero Chico, Mexico. The journey takes three days, and we barely stop. We see nothing. The insides of Texas gas stations. Rest stops alongside the highway. A Wells Fargo bank or two. Endless fields of cotton & many drive-thru restaurants. We sleep in the car & we talk to no one until we arrive in Mexico.
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I’ve lived on the Front Range of Colorado my entire life. I was born and raised here, something few people can say these days, as more and more people are moving to the area. According to the last census, more than 750,000 new people have joined the population of Colorado in the past decade.
Most of these people, seeking cheaper rent or mortgage prices, move into small suburban communities in and around Denver & Boulder — just as my parents did thirty-five years ago when they arrived, looking to start a family, and found themselves unable to afford their desired location of Boulder.
Boulder, for those unaware, maintains strict rules on new development — a controversial policy which has caused home values to skyrocket, but priced many, if not most, people out of the housing market. Even renting here, prices are high and most people live with roommates. Denver is not as restricted, but the housing demand still far outstrips the supply, especially for those with lower incomes.
For decades, developers have been falling over themselves to build new subdivisions and dense apartments in nearby commuter towns like Superior, Louisville, Lafayette, and Erie.
Three days ago, on December 30, 2021, a once-in-100-years type of fire sparked just outside of Boulder. Spurred on by record-setting winds which blew all day long (gusts up to 100 mph were measured), the fire quickly spread through the grasslands outside of Boulder and into the towns of Superior & Louisville, where fueled by the strong and unrelenting winds it consumed several subdivisions. Neighborhoods *just* like the one I grew up in, burnt back to nothing.
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I talked to an old friend from university the other night on the videophone. “You haven’t really been blogging much,” he said. “In fact, you haven’t done anything creative of late. It seems like all that energy has just gone into climbing.”
It was an insightful comment and made me think a lot.
Anyways, here’s some photos from the first day out ice climbing this season.
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2013.
4 a.m., Tijuana, Mexico.
Just across the border from San Diego.
Outside of a strip club.
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In the course of my job, I read a lot about cryptocurrency. Really. Like, too much. And for a long time, I barely understood any of it. DeFi? Blockchains? Staking? Hashing? As someone who is definitively ‘not a math guy’, I let it all wash over me.
However, I recently decided I had to learn a bit about this sector which was becoming a big part of my everyday world. So I started doing some due diligence and tuned into the space with a bit more intention. Eventually, figuring I would learn more with some skin in the game, I opened up a Coinbase account.
Here is where I found the Coinbase Card.
In my humble opinion, the Coinbase Card is the single best rewards card you can get in 2021 (for those in the USA — in Europe, this card is plagued with fees & is considerably less useful). Let me explain:
The Coinbase Card is a no-fee debit card (not a credit card), which currently pays you 4% back on every purchase you make. These rewards are deposited instantly into your Coinbase account in the form of selected cryptocurrencies.
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