Well, that was a journey.

If my calculations are correct the journey I have just been on took twenty hours from door to door. I left the house in Helsinki at 06:45, to walk to Itäkeskus where I caught a bus to the airport. At this time on a Saturday the 519 only runs once an hour so 06:45 was just right to catch the bus but too early to catch the plane.

The plane to Heathrow left at 11:25 and took three hours. I sat in Heathrow for almost three and a half hours, before beginning a ten hour flight to Denver. Thankfully this flight was not full and there was nobody sitting next to me. I drank bottled water, put on an eyemask and managed about six hours sleep.

Denver International AIrpost was pleasant enough, given that my head thought it was about 4am. The taxi ride was a dislocated journey through an American-looking landscape, and then we arrived at the Denver Marriott City Center.

I just liked it, from the moment I stepped up to the reception desk. They had no record of my room reservation. Then they found that they had been given the wrong arrival date and had therefore cancelled it when I “didn’t show up”. They dealt with all of this with great good humour, with no fuss – and very, very efficiently. I ended up sitting in a very comfortable room, with ultra-fast wifi, in no time at all.

Because my head thought the time was about dawn, and the people of Denver thought that the time was about 8pm, I compromised and went downstairs to have dinner in the D-Spot lounge, where I had a gorgonzola burger and a glass of Blue Moon beer.

Then I slept for almost twelve hours and woke up intact, with my body and mind operating on Denver time. And realised that the hotel was literally two blocks away from 16th Street, the heart of downtown Denver. I walked up and down and then played on the free buses.

Steve arrives tomorrow and then we will spend the day planning Wednesday’s workshop.