The Real World: Denver...

On my last night in Denver, I got through the tight security of Invesco Field to watch Barack Obama's speech at field level just fine. But getting past the security guard at Woody Paige's house later that night? A nightmare.

With hotel rooms in short supply, I had already been staying at Woody's country club house on a golf course for five nights without incident. For some reason, the woman at the guard house says I'm not on the list, have never been on the list, and she's not letting me through the gate. I had worked 16 hours and it was about 1:15 a.m. I tried to reason with her but she dug her heels in. I wasn't on the list.

Things got ugly. I don't want to get into more details but let's just say, many things happened. I was eventually let in. I'm not sure if that woman still has a job today. If not, I won't lose a wink of sleep over it.

But that was the only glitch in what was a wonderful stay. Woody is a well-known Denver Post columnist and ESPN personality who has been in the business long enough to talk about covering the Martin Luther King assassination in 1968 and still ambitious enough that he wrote a column from the Democratic National Convention every day I was there in addition to his regular sports column.

Here are links to my favorites from the week:
-- Been there, done that, do it again
-- Gripe time but wrong causes
-- Stadium has risen along with candidate's star
-- A special boy called Barry

We were a busy household for the week. Along with Woody's charming and lovely girlfriend Geri who was there some days, LA Daily News photographer Mike Baker stayed there and so did a bright young reporter from Boston, Matt Murphy (pictured with me Thursday night at Invesco),

Someone in The Denver Post newsroom, where we were headquarted all week, remarked that it sounded like something out of "The Real World" or "The Surreal Life." Well, notsomuch. We all put in long hours and worked our tails off so no time for any drama!

But almost every morning, we all managed to have breakfast on Woody's patio, reading the papers and sharing adventures from the night before. This morning (Friday), we had a little extra time with the convention over with and Woody had us in stitches as he talked about the days of hot type and stories being typed in triplicate. Once, the "e" on his typewriter stopped working, the equipment guy blew off fixing it so Woody wrote a column entirely without a single "e" and explained to readers why. This ticked off the equipment guy who then refused to fix the broken key. So Woody walked over to a window (I think it was a paper in Memphis), dropped the typewriter out the window and simply requested a new one.

I can't imagine that a hotel could have topped this set-up and boy, the company was terrific.