Denver Thoughts

June 1, 2007

That photograph is a satellite image of Denver. What I find most cool about it is that the green is basically the city. Denver, although a mile high, is essentially on a flat plain leading to the rocky mountains, which you can see there on the left side of the image. And yes, there was snow on the mountains when I was there.

Whenever I take one of these business trips, I try to pick a "favorite" thing about the trip or the city (aside from visiting friends). For instance, in Cincinnati, it was taking a walk over the bridges that cross the river and having boats cruise beneath me. In Atlanta, it was Bicentennial Park and the CNN tour. Anaheim was easy--Disney Land was just down the street and although I've been to both Disney Land and Disney World numerous times, the big memory from that trip was listening to a Dixie Land band playing down in the French Quarter area down by the lagoon. Kansas City was the World War I Museum, Baltimore was taking water taxis.

Denver's a little trickier. The trip got all screwed up. After I made my presentation Tuesday, I had to go deal with the airlines to change my reservations and by the time I was done dealing with that stuff, I decided to skip the last 2 hours of the meeting and go into downtown Denver, just so I could say I had. I also had a refrigerator magnet to buy and T-shirts to track down for the family. (Whenever we travel, we get a refrigerator magnet for the location).

I suppose it's mountains. I liked Denver's light rail system reasonably well, and the downtown area is nice. I think it's unfortunate that they've created this great downtown mall area that basically stretches from the Capitol to Coors Stadium, complete with free buses and access via the trains, and there's the sports stadiums, etc., but for some reason I wasn't really impressed by the stores and restaurants. I expected something a little more, I don't know, tourist-y, I guess. I did visit the Tattered Cover Bookstore, which is legendary. I was impressed. It's a well-designed store, set up so you almost have to browse (although they didn't have any of my books, and from what I could see didn't handle any books by Midnight Ink, although my search wasn't exhaustive). Nice store, though. If you're in Denver, make sure you stop in.

I suspect when I look back on this trip it'll be what a hassle it was. I flew in on Tuesday, got held up with storms at the airport, got stuck in horrible traffic getting to the hotel, had a terrific meal with Stephanie, Joyce and Kristy, the meeting managers, then spent a largely sleepless night tossing and turning in my room. The next morning was the Board Meeting, and around noon I got the phone calls about my aunt's death, and after a wildly phone-called-interrupted lunch I made my presentation (I also signed a multi-year contract with the AGT for my editorial services), then bolted to my room to deal with the airlines. I spent a couple hours downtown, then had a quick dinner at one of the hotel restaurants, hid out in my room and dealt with e-mail and more phone calls for an hour or so, watched a movie, then went to bed (and slept like crap). On Thursday I was up at 4:00 to catch a 5:00 shuttle to the airport so I could fly out at 8:00. I got back to Michigan about 12:30 Eastern Time, and finally made it home around 2:45 or so.

One thing I noticed, and I'm not sure if it's related, but I felt ill much of the time I was in Denver. I suspect this was me dealing with the altitude. I know when I was walking downtown that I felt a little breathless, and I susspect it was related to being a mile high.

Anyway, I'm back home, trying to figure out what's what.

Cheers,

Mark Terry