Denver, Colorado

Colorado Rocky Mountain highhhhhhhh!!!!!!! I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky! Well, not really but I did just get back from a 1.5 day training session on the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (don’t ask) in Denver. I’ll apologize in advance to any friends of mine who I was unaware were living in Denver and would now like to clue me in on that fact.

Anyway, this trip was going to be a bit different because a couple of non-trade compliance guys, Kevin and Mike, were going to accompany me so they could get a taste of, provide a different perspective on and bring up hitherto unknown issues about the ITAR as it would affect the company. We were going to take the same flights and even stay in the same room...yes, the same room; it’s a tough economy. An attorney for the company would also be attending but she was taking different flights.

We took off from work at about noon on Wednesday, driving the ‘ol Camry Hybrid down to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. It was a nice day, we were well ahead of schedule and we only had carry-on luggage so instead of catching the shuttle, we hoofed it across the parking lots to the terminal on foot. That’s one of the cool things about having a small hometown airport. The others are not having to walk a year and a half across the terminal to get to your gate. Bergstrom is shaped a bit like a half moon and so it’s easy peasy to get to where you’re going. It’s like the anti-Chicago O’Hare. The only downside, of course, is that it limits the cities where you can fly direct although there are a surprising number. If I hadn’t posted it before, a nifty map is here:

http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/austinairport/nonstops.htm

Heh, even to Lubbock. Austinites, before you complain about the paucity of options flying out of Bergstrom, check out Lubbock’s: DFW, Houston (IAH), Memphis, Albuquerque, Austin and Las Vegas.

Our flight was going to be on Frontier Airlines, the Denver-based airline that was going to have us on a, wait for it, direct flight! Yay! I had flown Frontier before from Austin to Phoenix via Denver last fall and had a decently pleasant experience. They’re the airline who have three interesting gimmicks. The first is to put wild animals on the tails of their planes and give them names. The flight attendants informed us during the safety briefing that we were flying with Jake the White-Tailed Deer. Pleased to meet you Jake! I see you’re also on the winglets at the end of the wings. The second gimmick is that Frontier has a hybrid first-class: the first four rows have extra legroom. For $25 a flight you can upgrade to those seats but if the flight is full they’ll fill those seats anyway with people that haven’t upgraded (as happened to us on the flight back). The third is that there are TVs on every seat back that you pay $6 for live DirecTV and $8 for first-run movies. If you don’t want to pay though, you are sometimes subjected to preview programming the whole trip because you can’t turn off the TV. As someone who either wants to look out the window, read or watch movies on the laptop, I don’t appreciate the extra distraction but, well, like most American flyers I’ll put up with a lot for the cheapest ticket and a direct flight to boot.

We arrived early enough that I was able to reserve a choice window seat in row 5. The flight was only 2/3 full at most so there were a lot of empty seats and, thankfully, plenty of room for the carry-on bags in the overhead bins. With all of the extra charges for checking in bags ($15-25) a lot more people are carrying on things, a lot of which you think shouldn’t be carry-ons. On a full flight you might not have a spot in a bin near you and either have to put it toward the back of the plane or have it checked, I think at no charge. I usually only take my backpack on-board when I travel, checking a suitcase, so I usually don’t have to worry about finding a bin. Trying to get an overhead bin spot definitely gives you an incentive to try to get on the flight as early as possible as opposed to my preferred method of waiting until most of the plane has boarded. You’re going to be spending a lot of time in it anyway, why increase the amount?

We had an interesting take-off out of Austin to avoid all the patchy layers of clouds. Usually when you take off you go straight up with maybe one turn to orient the plane in the direction you want to go. When you make multiple turns on the way up you know it’s a bit hairy. I think I regressed a bit in my turbulence tolerance as I was a bit light-headed until we levelled off though I don’t think my palms were sweaty (which is usually the first sign). Although I had a window seat, my view was mostly of clouds during the whole 1 hour and 43 minute flight, at least until we descended into Denver and I could see the Rockies towering in the distance. Luckily I had a seat on the left side of the plane as all the right side would see was plains and scrub. I always forget to request the side of the plane facing the mountains but this time I was lucky.

As I may have written last November, Denver is located on reasonably flat land with nary a tree to be seen. However, it can’t be more than 20-30 miles from the Rockies which is I suppose the big attraction. Its annual precipitation is only about 16”, well below Austin’s 33”. Wow. And I suppose that includes their snow.

Wow. Wikipedia tells me (so it must be the truth, eh) that Denver International Airport is the third-largest airport by land volume in the world and the tenth-busiest by passenger traffic. Denver?! Who knew?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_International_Airport

And while we’re on the subject, here’s the top 30 by passenger traffic for 2009:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airports_by_passenger_traffic#2009_statistics

And holy smokes, I’ve flown through each of the top fourteen.

We caught a Super Shuttle into downtown, about a twenty minute drive past lots of scrub and industrial areas. Our hotel was the Courtyard by Marriot Downtown. For $249 a night we could cram the three of us into a larger room with a king bed, a fold-out couch and a rolling twin with a mattress as good as the king. Staying three to a room might seem like a problem except that a) all three of us are pretty easy-going and reasonably quiet and b) we weren’t going to be spending much time in the room anyway. We were in the room by five catching up on work e-mail and around six or six-thirty set out to find something to eat. After having dinner at a burger restaurant, whose signature burger had a Hatch chile on it (misspelled as ‘chili’) and a stop at a bar afterward, we got back to the room and were all asleep within thirty minutes. I took the fold-out couch because, despite it being by far the least comfortable, I at least was not having to get up in the middle of the night to change a diaper or two.

The next morning we set out to find breakfast as the Courtyard didn’t have breakfast included in the room rate. We walked about six blocks down to an eatery recommended by the hotel clerks called the Delectable Egg. It was a local breakfast spot full of people about to head off to work downtown. This brings up an important travel point for those who know my travel habits: if I had been traveling alone, I never would have eaten there. Instead, I would’ve eaten very quickly in the hotel’s restaurant and been done with it. See, it is quite depressing for me to eat in a restaurant alone. I hate it. It makes me feel like a social failure, especially when there are tons of other people around having great conversations. The best I can do in such a place is to find a table near the window and sit facing it so that a) I can at least watch people walking by (and not just stare at my plate or a book) and b) so that I don’t have to see all of the other restaurant patrons. Therefore, when I search for eating spots, I invariably miss out on some great food because I try to find the places that have very few people in them so I can eat in reasonable solitude. This invariably means going to lunch counter-type places that serve things like gyros (in Europe), pizza or sandwiches but to me, that’s better than having fantastic food and a depressing social mood. Therefore, I was quite thankful to have meal companions.

The seminar was quite productive. I won’t bore you with the details.

That evening Mike and I took a walk through downtown Denver. The downtown area is kind of nice and has some pretty paths along Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. We followed those around, past the Broncos massive stadium, through an industrial area, an inner city neighborhood, by the State Capitol and back through downtown to our hotel. Feeling a bit tired after walking over five miles, we stayed at the hotel for dinner.

The next day we ate at the Delectable Egg for the second time, attended the final three and a half hours of the seminar (if you’re truly interested, more info is here: http://www.fedpubseminars.com/Course/?id=34&t=public). We caught Super Shuttle to the airport and somehow finangled seats in the first four rows, the ones with the extra legroom. Seems Frontier tries to get people to upgrade to those when they check in, then, when all the regular economy seats have filled up, they start filling all the empty seats with passengers who did not choose to upgrade but are checking in later. Mike and Kevin had to get their seats at the gate but I had a middle seat. At the gate, they obtained choice seats and, to my surprise, they switched my middle seat for a window in Row 3. Fantastic.

It was raining in Austin when I called Jennifer at the airport. I said that the weather was fantastic as far as I knew there weren’t any issues but I was unaware of the Austin weather conditions. Jennifer, knowing how much I hate turbulence, didn’t say anything (thanks Jennifer!). Of course, before we took off I knew because my seatmate was watching the weather when I glanced over plus the captain didn’t tell us our expected arrival time as they usually do. Oh well...let’s get back home! Of course, the urge to get back home wasn’t as large as usual because I’d only been away for two days as opposed to the usual two weeks but still, it would be nice to be able to sleep in my own bed at home that night. As we approached Austin we wove our way past massive cumulonimbus clouds signaling thunderstorms. It’s weird when you see clouds that reach higher than where the plane is, especially when you’re at cruising altitude. Luckily it was only cloudy in Austin and we landed with only some slight bumpiness.

After dropping off Kevin and Mike back at the company facility where they’d left their cars, I was back home by about 7pm last (Friday) night, yay! Most likely I won’t be back on the road until July when I take a scheduled and overdue trip to Hungary (budgetary considerations necessitated the delay) for a week or more. Until then, thanks for reading!