TED @Aspen, Day 1 - travel

I ended up not crashing last night until after 5:00 a.m., which was probably not the best move for someone trying to get over the flu. I stayed in bed until about noon, then worked, packed, worked, showered, and headed to the airport. When you're feeling lousy from the flu, nothing is more inviting than air travel, so I was stoked for the trip.

I was on an airline with which I have no privileges, so I enjoyed all the key features of modern air travel: slow check-in, long lines, two different security people making fun of my last name, flights too crowded to work, dry air, and enough changes in altitude and air pressure that I'm still not quite hearing correctly. Still, the planes took off and landed successfully and basically on time, so I count myself lucky.

I couldn't see much of Aspen in the dark from the back of the shuttle van, but I can tell you that snow is piled up everywhere. Sarah would love it.

The hotel/resort is a study in the collision of upscale luxury and mountain mellow. A sprawling set of low-slung buildings, it's quite pretty in the night, though a bit of a hike is necessary to go from anywhere to anywhere. The room they assigned me is very much to my taste: separate bedroom and living room/working room areas, good wireless, small kitchenette, good shower (no bath, but I never take baths), and soothing white-and-blond-wood looks. The staff members I encountered were also nice to a person--but so mellow that the salad I begged for (room service closes at 9:00!) sat unclaimed because everyone forgot it, no one knew how to make the room humidifier actually work or would bother to try to find out, etc. Lovely folks, polite and great, but I'm clearly the uptight East Coast guy in the group. This is also clearly the wrong place for a night owl: not only does room service close so early, they lock up the soda machines "you know, sometime around when things start closing." (The rest of the ensuing staff dialog: "Why do we do that?" "I don't know, but we do." "Yeah, we do.")

I need to gain some mountain mellow--and a stash of Diet Coke and pretzels.

On the plane from Denver to Aspen, I sat next to and talked with a cool fellow TEDster (the conference's term, so I'll use it) from Amsterdam whose ad agency's approach (advertising without advertising) put me in mind of Hubertus Bigend from Gibson's Pattern Recognition and Spook Country.

The flight really has set me back a bit physically, so I will wind up today's missive, finish a bit more outline, unpack, and finally grab some much-needed sleep. Tomorrow, perhaps the wily humidifier will choose to work for me.