Explorations of a Life
I’m sitting in concourse C at Denver International Airport after 20 minutes of trying to connect to their alleged “free” wifi. I absolutly could not get a connection working off of Internet Explorer from the perspective of getting the redirect to allow me to agree to behave. I fired up Firefox, and finally got that redirect so I could agree to the appropriate Terms & Conditions (legalese for fine, whatever, just let me in). It turns out that you are given free wifi following a 30 second advertisement. That’s cool, I can deal with that. The problem is that once you are in, they hijack your browser to use adjuggler to place a 1/5 frame across the top of the page to constantly show ads during your session. I’m noticing now that I’m in Tumblr, that everytime the add changes, it causes problems and delays on the text I’m typing in the tumblr frame. I don’t mind the up front ad, but the continual ones are more annoying than not having any wifi. More and more, I’m considering a wireless card for my laptop.
Denver International also has the Clear line at the TSA. I wrote earlier about my experiences with Registered Traveler programs, but I did end up renewing this year (as a convenience they renewed me before I got around to canceling). For those of you that don’t travel through DEN, there are two main security checkpoints for all gates; North and South. I went to the North checkpoint where I learned that that Clear checkpoint is only open Sun-Tues from 5am to 7pm. Since this is Wednesday I was redirected to the other end of the airport to the South checkpoint. First class checkin was wide open, so I could have taken that, but I wanted to see how Denver handled Clear. I walked to the other end of the airport, found the Clear line, and presented my ID, Clear Card, and Boarding Pass. I was then able to put my ID away, but kept the other items out. I walked down to a concierge, and presented my card. They put it into the machine, and I was then able to put that away. Following that, she gave me the bins, I uppacked my laptop, put that in a bin with my jacket and shoes and walked over to the security line where we cut in front of everyone to go through the actual checkpoint.
Overall, I saved no time over using the First Class line, at least at the time I was there. I’m sure at busy times, that changes. I still have to remove my shoes, and while the concierge carried the bins, I still took my own suitcase. I find it very hard to justify this at $124 per year, but if it was available in Minneapolis where First Class lines are still 20-30 minutes, I might think differently.
Yesterday, I was in downtown Denver, and had lunch at the Rialto Cafe. I had a variation of a BLT with Mozzerella Cheese, and it was quite good. For dinner I decided to go to the Rockies game. Coors Field is just a fun ball park, and it is located in the heart of LoDo, meaning that there are plenty of places to stop in for a beer following the game. If you have a chance, I recommend Coors Field for a game.
