Early last week for a biz trip, I flew first to Chicago, then hopped on a small airplane barely packed with passengers. The flight was barely 38 minutes and beverages weren’t even served.

On the way to the destination, I noticed a lack of traffic. Not even during rush hour. Not even when the freeway became a single lane because of construction. My coworkers and I cruised through.

When I came back to the Bay Area and for some reason decided to endure the traffic from San Francisco to Palo Alto at 8 am in the morning…I realized something.

Like wait a minute, this is where I want to be. I want to be where other people are. I don’t want to be in a place where a post office services multiple cities. Where there is one high school that serves over 10 miles of populace. I don’t want to be a place where everybody knows my name.

I want serendipity and excitement.

So what if one major tradeoff is traffic? It means that a lot of people want to be here. And that I am not the only one.