Day 1

Here I am, blogging in Denver. I'm kinda new to this whole blog thing, but it seems easy enough. I guess my goal with this blog is to keep all my friends in the loop while I'm away on business. If you find yourself reading this blog, I hope you'll comment on it so I still feel connected too. So here goes...


I arrived yesterday in Denver at about 5-ish. The trip went really well. Here's a tip for all you travellers out there: fly on Sunday! The airport (YEG) was emptier than a bachelor's fridge (I guess that's me included). The dumb thing about it was that my flight was booked with Air Canada, but it was actually a United Express flight...so all the rules and fees were different. I ended up paying for both of my checked bags! How rude, eh? US customs was even deader. You might think that's a good thing, but when there's nobody around except you and the customs officers and you're asking for an I-94 (multiple entry visa thingy), it gets a little nerve-racking.

I knew there was nothing to worry about, but I was still shaking like a leaf when I gave the customs girl my well-crafted-lawyer-letter. I couldn't quite hear the questions she was asking me, so I kinda fumbled with some of the answers. I thought "great, she must think I have an eight-ball in my a#%. I'm screwed." That's about when her Geiger counter went off. She looked at me with suspicious eyes... I looked back with puppy-dog eyes, hoping to neutralize her. She asked if I had any medical procedures recently; I said no. Then she leaves her booth and questions everyone in the room. Talk about a confidence booster; I thought for sure I was going to be denied entry. So she comes back to her booth, and tells me to come with her to "the processing room." I didn't care what she called it, to me it might as well been the rape room; I clinched a little. I was 80% sure I was going to be violated; thank God I was wrong.

I just waited in a side room for 5-10 minutes, and then another officer gave me my passport with my I-94 stapled in it, and sent me on my way - quite courteously too (what a change). All in all, it was a quick process, but I ended up waiting almost 2 hours at the gate. We caught a good jet stream and landed in Denver a bit early.

The airport in Denver is pretty cool; it kinda reminded me of Disneyland. When you get off the plane you go to a lower transportation level and wait for an LRT to pick you up and take you to the baggage claim. I really wish I knew that at the time =P The signage is practically non-existent, and everyone is wandering around like lemmings or being herded like cattle...okay, maybe it's more like rustled - they were rustled up like cattle. After a little bit of wandering, mixed with some instinct and a little prayer -we found our baggage claim! :) (There's like over a hundred baggage claims). We also found our co-worker who went the day before Ryan and I. So off we went...to hunt the car. 25 minutes later...we reach the outer parking lot, and stop for water and snacks to take us the rest of the way. Haha, just kidding - there was no water and snacks. Finally we got to our awesome SUV (thanks rental place for overbooking your mid-size vehicles and upgrading us to a brand new Chevy).

From then on it felt like I had arrived. The air is thin here, and I started to feel light-headed and a little dizzy within hours (hence the name of the blog). We dropped off our stuff at our amazing apartments (stay tuned for pics), and went out to buy some essentials. By this time we needed some food pretty badly, so we ate at Via Baci, this classic Italian pizza place that makes almost everything from scratch. Yum! From there we went across the parking lot to Super Target to buy groceries.

So here's my deal with Target: I get mesmerized there. This happens to me in the regular Targets, so imagine me in a Super Target. Yeah, I pretty much became retarded for however long we were in there (I not only lost track of time, but also lost all concept of time). Really though, how can you not get lost in a place that has almost a dozen different types of Mini-Wheats?? I'm sure I spent a good 45 minutes in the cereal aisle. Here's the flavors I can remember: blueberry muffin, strawberry delight, vanilla yogurt creme, maple sugar, cinnamon streusal, brown sugar, vanilla frosted, regular, and.... I think that's it. Oh, but those were the regular size Mini-Wheats; they also had an assortment of bite-size Mini-Wheats. I wanted to get the blueberry muffin kind, but I couldn't discriminate against any of the other flavors - they all looked sooo good. So I ended up getting Wheaties (how can you go wrong with the breakfast of champions?). That's one thing I absolutely love about the States - they have a huge selection of everything. Oddly enough, they had no All Bran Buds (my fave). I was pretty choked at the time, but that subsided when I found the organic milk and the Tropicana orange juice (Mmmm...). I bought everything with my credit card, because I didn't grab any US funds before I left, and I had to sign using a stylus and some touch screen. How hurting is that? Have you ever used those things? I'm sure it was me who signed, but the signature looked like the scribblings of a little child. I don't think signing for stuff means anything anymore. Anyway... that was the "in a nutshell" version of the adventure out to Denver.

I'm absolutely loving it here. It's nice to get away and have some solitude. I can't wait to see how the rest of this trip unfolds; and I hope you can't wait to read about it. :)

Ciao for now,

Dizzy in Denver