Back to Denver.

Shall we just go through my day so far?

Up at 5am to catch an 8am flight from La Guardia, which is remarkably on time. It’s also jammed full and my upgrade didn’t clear, so I’m in seat 8921B. The only respite is the large quantity of quite attractive men. Denver seems to collect the rugged outdoor types. All check shirts and workers tans.

The flight lasts for approximately a week and the only food served comes for 5 dollars (cash only – of which I have none because Jet Blue are credit card only) in a acid green plain box and contains of all things a mini can of tuna. Food fit for a Guantanamo inmate I think.

Finally we land, although it’s more of a drop (I expect we ran out of petrol) and trundle the 54 miles from the runway to the terminal, land is cheap in Colorado. As the sun sets and we arrive it feels like an overnight in the cabin waiting for the doors to open.

We’re a mile high in Denver and yet I’m feeling quite low. I walk off the jet and into the terminal. Starving hungry (I had a slice of ham for breakfast at 5am, although that’s more like a late dinner really isn’t it?) I look for food, a chance to cheat my diet which I resolve in myself by seeing it as a reward for not buying one of their ’snack options’. I walk up to the McDonald’s counter and demand a cheeseburger (I was planning to not eat the bun). At which point the server, who likes like an extra from Oliver! with hair that looks like a sack of rusty nails murmurs something so incomprehensible to me I swear my eardrums were punctured as we fell onto the runway.

Having asked her to repeat what she’d said three times, I realise she’s telling me that it’s still the breakfast menu. Clearly it may be 10am in Denver, but it’s 12 in NYC and I need some food. However, as I’m now so totally infuriated by her inability to speak properly (without regard to my apparent inability to hear properly) I skulk away. And loop the arrivals hall looking for ANYTHING salty and stodgy.

Welcome to healthy Denver. There’s nothing. This is the most beautiful part of America I know, with some good rugged people and outdoorsy types, maybe that explains the drought of bad food options. I’m obviously more furious than ever.

I leave get to the arrivals hall and need food. So I find the ‘Marketplace’ a store that looks like it was decorated by someone who runs those ‘paint your own mug’ shops in destitute towns in Cornwall. There in the corner, beyond the gift cards, stuffed animals, 4 feet long strips of gum and cling filmed chocolate squares sit 2 types of cheese. I buy both and consume them rapidly.

To the taxi and into it straight away (having remembered to get cash). The driver looks like he’s auditioning to be Eddie Murphy, but from the 80’s when it was all Thriller Leather, smiles and copious amounts of ‘recreational drugs’. We exchange dialogue, supposedly but once again I don’t understand him and ask him to repeat what he just said. Unfortunately I can’t hear that either as we are suddenly travelling so fast his words are lost in the sonic boom.

Clearly he doesn’t know how to get to Golden (the other side of Denver and in the mountains and quite lovely) and obviously nor do I. Enter the iPhone 3G, a product so refined and beautiful but burdened with the energy efficiency of a Sherman Tank. I plug in the address, and the little blue dot tells me where I am. Apparently I’m on 14th Street by 10th Avenue in Manhattan and the route is 3 thousand miles and will take one and a half days.

Once again, the iPhone is iAnnoying and promptly rebooted.

GPS working we race to the offices, from what I can see through the speed induced distortion, the landscape is as ever captivating.

Within 30 minutes we arrive at the offices, and I arrive to meet my client, it’s 1030am. I’ve been up since 5am, travelled a couple of thousand miles and eated a stick of processed cheese and some ‘wafer thin’ ham. I’m greeted with ‘how nice to see you, you’ll have plenty of time to prepare, we’ll start the meeting at 2pm’.

Bingo Bango Bongo.