I used the “official airline” of the Democratic National Convention and as those of you who followed my Twittering already know, wound up getting to Denver some 5 hours later than scheduled. The holdup? Apparently, the folks who run the airline had no idea that so many people would be flying out of Norfolk at 6am on a Sunday. I had done the electronic check-in thing, but had to check my bags. And therein was the problem. The contractors who operate the curbside service had not been trained on the relatively new computer system installed there. As the result, they couldn’t get anyone’s bags checked. The line inside was horrible.
Now a little common sense says that if you have a flight going out at 6am, you move the people standing in the line for said flight to the head of the line. Think they did that? Um, no. And the counter check-in was woefully understaffed. To add insult to injury, the guy who waited on me actually took longer to process my bags check-in than did the woman who waited on the guy in line behind me. And then he gave me the wrong boarding pass! Although I managed to get my bags checked at 5:56am, it was too late to board the flight and I was put on standby for the next flight. Scheduled to leave at 7:16am, I managed to get on board that flight, which actually left at 7am.
(As is generally the case, I also was chosen for that extra screening.)
Arriving in Chicago, I missed my connecting flight by about 5 minutes. I tried to get on standby for another flight – there were several – but all were overbooked. So I took a circuitous route to Denver. I ended up going to Bozeman MT (anybody know why there is an airport there?) and from there to Denver. I arrived on schedule in Denver at 2:13 but the Denver airport is a ways out from the hotels. Once I claimed my bags (thankfully, they made it to Denver – even before I did) and headed to the hotel shuttle. I finally got to the hotel at a little after 3.
The Virginia delegation was invited to a reception at Red Rocks, which is either 30 minutes or a hour, depending who you ask, from the hotel. We were supposed to be in the lobby at 4pm. I didn’t have time to change, plus I hadn’t eaten all day. So I decided to skip the reception.
I’ve ordered a bite to eat and I think I’ll just relax for a bit. Maybe head out to a concert being held around the corner in a bit. We’ll see.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Sweet! Can’t wait to read your reporting! Have fun…
You would have enjoyed the trip to Red Rocks, Vivian. The buses got to the hotel about 35 minutes late because the various protesters around town are screwing up traffic royally. Then it turned out the bus drivers were all from out of state. Ours missed not one but two turns and took us on a lovely winding mountain backroad–scenic, but a bit scary when he finally found a place wide enough to turn around.
Red Rocks is a beautiful place and the reception was nice enough, but it was windy and threatening rain (plus a number of people were headed back to that concert downtown), so we bailed on the concert and caught a bus back. That driver did a fine job returning, despite having 60 or so backseat drivers (me included) on board.
Now, the only question is whether you’ll get out alive and/or with your sanity intact!
Vivian, This is one of the blogs selected for coverage of the Convention …
http://virginiadem.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/virginia-blogs-to-cover-dnc-convention-from-denver/ … I was impressed by your take-along-tech entry … stay safe!
Glad you got there safely!