A Day Late and Dollars Short. Welcome to the Mile High Club.

Mental note: when packing, it's always a good idea to remember to bring your computer's power supply. So much for daily posting. Be that as it may: we continue, a day late and $89.95 short thanks to a local friendly Best Buy in suburban Denver and a replacement power supply. Thank you Best Buy!

Flights of Fantasy

Having packed and checked our own bags, and being briefly detained by a testy security agent due to an ongoing first/middle name issue on my ID (I need to get that fixed), we arrived at the gate an hour before our original flight was to leave. The flight, however, was now scheduled with an estimated arrival time that left only 10 minutes to make the connection in Minneapolis. It didn't look good.

The friendly, smiling, officious person at the desk confirmed this, providing option 1: stay overnight in Minneapolis (sorry, no hotel voucher due to non-weather related delay). Option 2: go back home, come back for another flight the next morning. This was unpleasant news indeed, as mentally, I was already gone.

Luckily, when the plane was even further delayed and all hope basically lost, I went to the desk at another gate to avoid the angry mob. The friendly, smiling, officious Northwest Airlines person at that desk, looking at the exact same information that her friendly, smiling, officious co-workers had , spanked the keyboard a few times and pumped out boarding passes for a USAir non-stop flight leaving in just one hour. SWEET! We would arrive a scant 10 minutes later than our original scheduled arrival time. Now THAT'S friendly, smiling and officious!

The Mile High Club



For the uninitiated, Denver is not actually in the Mountains. It rests up against the eastern slope of the foothills a mile high in altitude on the semi-arid plains. Viewed from the East, the mountains rise up spectacularly to the west filling the horizon from south to north, with several 14,000 foot plus peaks visible on clear days.

It's a beautiful and increasingly cosmopolitan city and the true gateway to the west. No visit to Denver is complete for the booklover without a trip to Denver's biggest and most famous indie bookstore The Tattered Cover. The Booktraveler visited two of their three location. The first, just east of Downtown in a funky area of refurbished and hopefully soon-to-be-refurbished mansions, hipster bars and a few hard luck holdovers from more recent times, is located in the newly the renovated Lowenstein Theater giving it a truly distinctive flavor. Opened just three years ago and replacing their famed Cherry Creek location of 20 years, it offers a huge selection with a variety of unique reading rooms and cubbyholes to make a day of it, not to mention a friendly, helpful staff that provides even further value.

Tattered Cover, East Colfax



After your visit there, make sure you stop by next door at the independent music store Twist and Shout. They have more vinyl than an '80's fashion show and their selection is downright AWESOME!

Twist and Shout












The Tattered Cover is famed for winning their case in Colorado Supreme Court back in 2000, barring The Man from accessing their clients' purchasing records. Keep the faith!

Thanks go out to our Booktravelers hosts in Denver. We had a great time! Next post: Tattered Cover LoDo, Capital Books (the best and oldest used bookstore in Denver), and the 2-1/2 Mile Club, gasping at the beauty of the Rockies from over 13,000 feet. CU then! -Cheers