Worldcon Trip Day 3: A Day in Denver
Our unexpected free day in Denver was useful. We didn't have to set any alarms, and we still managed to wake up after eight hours of sleep with plenty of time to get the included breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Denver. The staff at the hotel have been very helpful, even though they are having to work with a hotel whose HVAC system is set at a single temperature and cannot be changed. We heard that they don't expect this to be fixed until next spring. They gave us a room fan to help. Apparently the whole hotel is set to 22°C/71°F, although the actual temperature varies from place to place. But it's acceptable.
I dealt with the back-to-back reservations after breakfast. The woman who checked us in last night was still at the front desk, nearing the end of her "day," which helped because she remembered our issue. Reprogramming our keys was routine. One advantage of the back-to-back reservation is that each night counts as a new arrival, so I get an extra 500 IHG points in the bargain. I talked with her about our travel plans and she expressed her envy and asked if we could take her with us.
After breakfast and after I got a shower, we walked down to Target, were we were looking for a computer mouse. I'd set one of mine aside when packing on Thursday and apparently left it on the desk. We would have preferred a USB mouse, but the only ones they had were wireless ones, so we did get one.
Another thing I left behind were my handkerchiefs. The only ones we found at Target were made in China, so I'll improvise. It shouldn't be a huge problem.
A few other things we think we can put off until we get to Iceland or to the UK.
I worked on getting all three of my computers working. Each of them (one personal, two work-related) had different challenges, all of which I overcame. In contrast, Lisa plugged her very old machine into the Ethernet port and everything worked without a problem. Even though I won't need the work machines until after Worldcon, when I will work remotely for a while, I've discovered that it's important to get those machines online regularly; otherwise, they "forget" me and it's a whole lot of work to get them working again. Unfortunately, this also means that I'm apt to get a message asking for me to do something while I'm on vacation. OTOH, I'm also given a significant amount of flexibility from my employer, so I feel some obligation to flexibility of my own. It only took about an hour to sort out the computers and answer the work-related email. I expect to do this in Iceland, London, and Glasgow as well.
In the afternoon, we went out for a walk around downtown Denver. We had nothing specific in mind; we were just getting a walk and looking around. Downtown is all torn up for rebuilding of the 16th Street Transit Mall, so there was plenty of construction to dodge.
We walked down to the Convention Center, site of Denvention Three, the 2008 Worldcon. Lisa and Kuma Bear looked up at the Big Blue Bear that sits outside the building looking in.
We had been scouting out places to get lunch or dinner during our walk. Initially we planned on getting Hawaiian BBQ from a stand in a park along 16th Street, but by the time we got there, they were sold out for the day. We'd stopped at Walgreens and bought more drinks on the way, so we took those back to the room. With no refrigerator, we can only get stuff that we'll drink right away or that does not require refrigeration.
It was warm and we thought humid (compared to Fernley), and we decided to get pizza from Giordano's downtown Denver and make an early dinner of it. The pizza and pasta was ready on time, and we took it back to the hotel and had a decently comfortable early dinner.
About the time we were done with dinner, an email popped up from IcelandAir. Unfortunately, it was not the news we wanted to hear: our bid to upgrade to Saga class on our flight from Denver to Iceland tomorrow was not accepted. Now we can only hope that the third seat doesn't fill in the row where our original reservation is. This is a pity, as their Saga class is pretty nice, and we've managed to "Class Up" on most of our previous trips.
There's still Worldcon/WSFS stuff chasing after me. This afternoon, I deleted some hoax bids from the Worldcon.org website whose sites have evaporated, and there is some late news from Glasgow to add to the News section there. Everything else will have to wait until we get to Iceland.
We plan to get some good rest tonight, and to check out around Noon tomorrow (hotel permitting), get a taxi to Union Station, and catch a train out to Denver International Airport to get there well before our 4:40 PM flight. Because we didn't get the class-up bid, we need to carefully pack everything so we only have one checked bag each; however, this looks doable based on our initial packing. Still, it would have been nice to get those better seats.
I dealt with the back-to-back reservations after breakfast. The woman who checked us in last night was still at the front desk, nearing the end of her "day," which helped because she remembered our issue. Reprogramming our keys was routine. One advantage of the back-to-back reservation is that each night counts as a new arrival, so I get an extra 500 IHG points in the bargain. I talked with her about our travel plans and she expressed her envy and asked if we could take her with us.
After breakfast and after I got a shower, we walked down to Target, were we were looking for a computer mouse. I'd set one of mine aside when packing on Thursday and apparently left it on the desk. We would have preferred a USB mouse, but the only ones they had were wireless ones, so we did get one.
Another thing I left behind were my handkerchiefs. The only ones we found at Target were made in China, so I'll improvise. It shouldn't be a huge problem.
A few other things we think we can put off until we get to Iceland or to the UK.
I worked on getting all three of my computers working. Each of them (one personal, two work-related) had different challenges, all of which I overcame. In contrast, Lisa plugged her very old machine into the Ethernet port and everything worked without a problem. Even though I won't need the work machines until after Worldcon, when I will work remotely for a while, I've discovered that it's important to get those machines online regularly; otherwise, they "forget" me and it's a whole lot of work to get them working again. Unfortunately, this also means that I'm apt to get a message asking for me to do something while I'm on vacation. OTOH, I'm also given a significant amount of flexibility from my employer, so I feel some obligation to flexibility of my own. It only took about an hour to sort out the computers and answer the work-related email. I expect to do this in Iceland, London, and Glasgow as well.
In the afternoon, we went out for a walk around downtown Denver. We had nothing specific in mind; we were just getting a walk and looking around. Downtown is all torn up for rebuilding of the 16th Street Transit Mall, so there was plenty of construction to dodge.
We walked down to the Convention Center, site of Denvention Three, the 2008 Worldcon. Lisa and Kuma Bear looked up at the Big Blue Bear that sits outside the building looking in.
We had been scouting out places to get lunch or dinner during our walk. Initially we planned on getting Hawaiian BBQ from a stand in a park along 16th Street, but by the time we got there, they were sold out for the day. We'd stopped at Walgreens and bought more drinks on the way, so we took those back to the room. With no refrigerator, we can only get stuff that we'll drink right away or that does not require refrigeration.
It was warm and we thought humid (compared to Fernley), and we decided to get pizza from Giordano's downtown Denver and make an early dinner of it. The pizza and pasta was ready on time, and we took it back to the hotel and had a decently comfortable early dinner.
About the time we were done with dinner, an email popped up from IcelandAir. Unfortunately, it was not the news we wanted to hear: our bid to upgrade to Saga class on our flight from Denver to Iceland tomorrow was not accepted. Now we can only hope that the third seat doesn't fill in the row where our original reservation is. This is a pity, as their Saga class is pretty nice, and we've managed to "Class Up" on most of our previous trips.
There's still Worldcon/WSFS stuff chasing after me. This afternoon, I deleted some hoax bids from the Worldcon.org website whose sites have evaporated, and there is some late news from Glasgow to add to the News section there. Everything else will have to wait until we get to Iceland.
We plan to get some good rest tonight, and to check out around Noon tomorrow (hotel permitting), get a taxi to Union Station, and catch a train out to Denver International Airport to get there well before our 4:40 PM flight. Because we didn't get the class-up bid, we need to carefully pack everything so we only have one checked bag each; however, this looks doable based on our initial packing. Still, it would have been nice to get those better seats.