Infrequent Traveler
It was Wednesday night when the text popped up.
Are you checking baggage?
Am I ever, I thought, before replying in the affirmative to my college pal who’d offered to pick me up from the Denver airport on Thursday.
“I may bring a pretty big bag,” I warned. “Shoes, it’s always shoes with me.’”
But it was more than size 10 Sasquatch shoes that had me thinking I might need an old-fashioned steamer trunk and a Sherpa to carry it.
Everything I’m taking minus the hanging stuff.
Like many infrequent travelers, I overpack. Six days out of town? To a city where the spring weather is “unstable”: warm one minute, cold the next with the possibility of rain every day? Top that off with several events including one Saturday night with a “Colorado casual” dress code.
COLORADO casual? What the heck is that?
A denim skirt and cowboy boots? A dress? Nice jeans and a sweater? Is a bong involved? Coors?
I have NO idea. Better bring all options, I figured, I can always stuff the boots with underwear and save room in the suitcase.
Going to need a warm jacket and mittens for the day trip up Pike’s Peak. Workout wear for the gym in the hotel. Oh look, a rooftop pool. Better pack a bathing suit or two, nothing worse than putting on a damp suit. That means a coverup and flip-flops, too.
Comfy shoes for walking - blue and black - sandals for going out, unless it’s cold at night, in that case I’ll need dressier pumps.
Two blazers, navy and black.
Umbrella. Raincoat. Hair dryer (every woman with hair knows you can’t trust hotel dryers, they barely stir up a breeze.) Flat iron. Three purses. A small one for the party, a medium one to carry around town and a huge sacky one for the flights.
My iPad, of course, so I can post to the website. Charging cables. A battery pack so my phone doesn’t die before I flash my boarding pass.
Toiletries. (NO self-respecting woman ever uses the hotel shampoo, conditioner and soap. Those are for pilfering. ) Make up. Jewelry.
Vitamins, to counteract the alcohol.
Sunscreen. Lip balm. Refillable water bottle.
Sweet and hot beef jerky washed down with a Diet Coke. Perfect meal.
Beef jerky, the perfect hotel snack that keeps you from raiding the minibar. Bonus: Adds almost no weight to your luggage.
Paperback for the flight.
And, of course, scarves. To hide my neck. Every woman over 50 wraps her neck even when it’s 100 degrees.
As I packed I remembered my last trip to Denver. It was the summer of 2008 and I was covering both national political conventions for The Pilot. As soon as the Dems wrapped up in Colorado I flew to Minneapolis-St. Paul for the GOP.
I saved this, knowing it would be a collector’s item someday. Proof of Democratic insanity.
Denver went crazy green for the lefties and in keeping with the insanity, hotels had switched to wooden room keys.
Seriously.
No, of course they didn’t work. Does anyone use wooden keys?
Here’s what I wrote back then:
Here in the Mile High City, where Democrats boast that they're staging the "greenest national political convention ever," some hotels have switched from plastic to biodegradable wooden key cards to get guests in and out of their hotel rooms.
Temporarily, that is.
By next week, I bet most of this beaver food will be where it belongs. In the landfill of lousy ideas.
Wooden keys -- and I have one right here -- are about the same size as those durable, plastic credit cardlike keys that are used in saner places.
Only these are like George Washington's teeth. (Yes, I know his teeth were made of ivory. We're having some fun here.)
Trouble is, they don't open doors much better than George's choppers.
Many times, when walking the corridor of my hotel, I see frustrated guests locked out of their rooms and cussing their keys.
Wooden keys are stubborn. They splinter. They break. And they don't hold a magnetic charge.
"If it doesn't work, don't worry, we'll get you another one," the desk clerk assured me Saturday night as he handed me my wooden key, adding, "Be careful. They're pretty fragile."
Fragility. Just what you want in a hotel key.
At Sunday's green-themed extravaganza at the Red Rocks amphitheater, one of the speakers declared -- to thunderous applause -- that these biodegradable keys would keep 1,300 tons of plastic out of landfills.
Hilarious.
A hotel key weighs almost nothing and can be reused. It's inconceivable that a city the size of Denver could discard more than a thousand tons of plastic hotel keys in a week. Until this week there may have been a naive belief that the rest of the world would stampede to wooden hotel keys.
Not going to happen. The hotel I'm staying in reverts to plastic next week.
This 2023 trip promises to be much better. No Obama. Good friends. Plastic room keys.
