So long to Denver's mediocre food, time difference, cold air

A river snakes probably somewhere in the South.

I'm getting the tiresome and routine posts out of the way. I eventually will get on with the controversial and critical ones about copy editors and all the things I learned and didn't learn during the ACES conference in Denver.

My blood obviously has thinned during my seven months in Florida. Denver's cold, dry air didn't go over so well.

For one, I noticed my nose getting drier during my time in the city, and the skin on my bones was becoming something akin to a flaky pasty. There's one good thing about Florida's humidity: It's an automatic body lotion.

The conference rooms at the Marriott, in which I heard informative ramblings about various aspects of copy editing, were kept at, I'm guessing, a chilly 68 degrees. Copy editing isn't a very aerobic exercise, so I had to do something other than moving around to stay warm. But even a combination of two T-shirts, a long-sleeve shirt, a sweater, a jacket and four cups of Earl Grey per hour didn't work.

By the last night of my stay in Denver, Saturday, the chill was in my bones. I shivered. I coughed. I couldn't get warm. For me, it effectively ruined the conference-capping party.

I suppose it didn't help that I couldn't get a lick of sleep in Denver. Maybe it was the air. Maybe it was the hotel bed. But most likely, it was the two-hour time difference. Besides the one-hour differences I've experienced by traveling to New Orleans and Maritime Canada, I had never been subjected to a two-hour jet lag.

It so messed me up that I woke up at 6 a.m. Sunday for my 6 a.m. shuttle ride to the airport. I made it, though.

And it was partially because I was tired and because of my lack of airplane experience that I didn't realized I had an assigned seat on my United for Ted flight back to Orlando.

I got onto the plane, picked a seat at random, sat in it and noticed that everyone else was trying to find assigned seats. Then, I looked at my ticket: 20F. I checked which seat I was in: 20F. It could have been the luckiest thing I had ever done. Too bad I didn't win a prize.

During the flight, I looked down and saw a distinct line with snow on one side and brown grass on the other. In the photo below, you can see snow on the right side but not on the left. Good riddance, Denver and your weather. Twenty-two years of living with snow and the cold as a native Mainer, and I can no longer handle it.

Smokin' ACES home