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15th Oct 2005
All together in Denver
Saturday, 15th October, 2005
By the time we awoke this morning the boys were already en-route to Denver.
A basket of continental breakfast items was delivered to the room at 7.30 and we left the hotel about an hour later. joining the highway immediately and cruising over the Golden Gates and through San Francisco without hitch. We dropped the car off after 1302 miles in the week.
Inside the airport, there was a hell of a queue with what appeared to be half of America going on vacation. We wandered a little bit to see where we needed to get to and eventually ‘stood in line’. During the wanderings I accidentally ran over the foot of one of the United ‘hosts’ and carried on without a second glance, which Anne (who was following), advised me it didn’t go down well. After we’d check our luggage, we then had to join a line for ‘security’ and due to the shortening timescale, we moved across to the First Class … and blow me the bloke who’s foot I (allegedly) ran over had shifted positions in the interim and was there checking the passes.
We arrived at Gate 86 with about 1 minute to spare before scheduled boarding … but as so often happen we stood around for another quarter of an hour while everyone was shepherded on board.
We had middle seats this time on quite a full aircraft and I sat next to a very tall Chinese businessman. He must have been 6 foot 6 and just after I stood up to adjust the air vents for Anne and my seats, he stood up, craned himself across and opened his own full blast.
An icy blast of cold air, very focussed bathed his seat. It was so focussed that the way I was sitting, I actually got a cold nose as the blast skimmed across me. Anne was soon complaining about the temperature and I had to make adjustments. My Chinese friend made no such move and gradually began to freeze. He was so cold he was sitting on his hands and every few moments he would crash his knees together. It was a bizarre performance … but I decided not to interfere, but to just sit back in the seat out of the blast of cold air, occasionally warming the end of my nose surreptitiously ... and watch with interest.
We got the bags and checked the boys’ arrival time. 6.24 this evening – about 4 hours away.
We caught the shuttle bus out to the Dollar car stand and managed to get the car upgraded slightly to a larger model with three tiers of seats. It doesn’t use space well because it has individual rather than bench seating … but with Ben, Nick and Harry to get on board, it’s the better option. We cleared the compound, dumped the bags in the car and the car in a visitor parking and caught the shuttle back to DIA … and there we sat for two hours.
In the main concourse, there’s a collaborative project including Native Americans (or First Nations, I think they’re more correctly referred to). It takes the form of studies and perceptions by them in the form of photographic images and paintings to demonstrate Indian culture in the 21st century. In the concourse, they have three ‘sound showers’ with 3 minutes of introductory narrative about aspects of the display and also backed with native chant and drumming. I would guess it was well funded and clearly aimed at commissioning native artists to ‘state their case’.
The boys cleared the aircraft and customs reasonably quickly. We made the transfer back across to the car and then embarked on Denver and a telephone guided drive across town to John and Lindsey’s and a reunion with the full Fairbairn team and one Maitland representative.
A few beers and a few steaks later, we were well into Colorado life.
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Diary Photos
| 15th Oct 2005 |
| Arrivals |
| First glimpse of the boys getting through customs and spillling out onto the concourse |
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| 15th Oct 2005 |
| World travellers |
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