Five’s company

DENVER–I didn’t know much about this Colorado city before arriving here last Wednesday night (Thursday morning, Manila). As a Wild West fan, I read in a book that William Cody, more popularly known as Buffalo Bill, came from the Mile High City where native American tribes of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Apache, Arapajo, Ute and Crow settled in the pre-gold rush era of the 1800s.

Of course, if you’re a National Basketball Association (NBA) fan, you know the Nuggets make their home in Denver.

Our five-man group from Solar left Manila last Wednesday morning. Solar vice president for operations Ralph Roy, Solar Interactive managing director Mikey Garcia, Solar head of production Erick Tam, Chino Trinidad and I boarded a Cathay Pacific flight which brought us to Hong Kong then to Los Angeles and finally, here.

Including stopovers, the trip from Manila to Denver took about 24 hours.

Our US point of entry was L. A. and it was a breeze going through immigration and customs. The immigration officer who stamped my passport turned out to be a Manila-born 1958 La Salle high graduate Chris Conner whose mother is a Filipina from San Pablo City. He didn’t introduce himself at first but I suspected he had Filipino roots because in his line of questioning, he seemed to know a lot about the Philippines.

Chino brought in two cases of Red Bull energy drink and boxes of bird’s nest soup mix for Manny Pacquiao with whom we’re hooking up in Los Angeles after the All-Star Weekend. Chino and I declared a case each in our customs document.

My good friend Roy Gonzalez, who spends half the month in Los Angeles and the other half in Chicago supervising two hospitals as vice president for patient health care services, met us at the airport and treated us to a late lunch. Then he drove us back to the terminal where he took an American Airlines flight to Denver.

We arrived here about 9 p.m. About 30 minutes later, we lined up for a shuttle bus in freezing weather outside the terminal building to take us to Residence Inn where we were booked to stay two nights before transferring to Marriott Hotel downtown. The Marriott rooms were fully booked and we couldn’t be accommodated until last Friday.

We enjoyed the Residence Inn which is a cluster of cottages. We stayed in Room 1224–all five of us in a spacious townhouse. No other rooms were available. There were two bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, a stairway leading to a loft with a bed and another bed on the first floor.

Erick slept on a sofa, Chino took the first floor bed (after much prodding), Mikey and Ralph were up in the loft and I laid on a comforter on the floor. I didn’t mind sleeping on the ground because the hard, flat surface was good for my back. We asked Ralph to sleep on the first floor bed but he gave it up.

Breakfast was free at the Residence Inn and a shuttle ferried guests to the downtown area by request. Wireless internet access was free, too.

Early last Friday, we checked out of the Residence Inn and moved into the Marriott, the NBA’s official media hotel. We were assigned separate single rooms.

It worked out that for the first two days, we were all together because we got closely acquainted. For instance, I met Garcia for the first time and found out his mother is my wife Menchu’s friend Maribi. Menchu and Maribi were named two of the country’s five most outstanding coeds in a contest in the early 1970s.

My first impression of Denver was solidly positive. The enormity of the Denver International Airport caught me by surprise. I learned later it is the largest airport in the US, covering 53 square miles, an area big enough to hold the Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago O’Hare airports combined.

I also learned that Denver is called the Mile High City because of its 5,280-foot elevation. Within a mile radius, downtown Denver has three new major sports stadiums, America’s second largest performing arts center, three college campuses, various museums, a mint producing 10 billion coins a year, more than 5,000 hotel rooms, a $140 Million amusement park, an aquarium with sharks and more than 300 restaurants, brew pubs, discos and nightspots.

Because of Denver’s altitude, water boils at 202 degrees instead of 212 and it takes four minutes to soft boil a three-minute egg. Golf balls travel 10 percent farther in the thin air as do baseballs and footballs. No wonder it is in Denver where the longest field goal ever of 63 yards was registered in the National Football League.

When not interviewing players or shooting footage, we hang out at the 16th Street Mall, only a block away from the Colorado Convention Center where the NBA Jam Session was set up on 350,000 square feet of space. The "mall" is a mile-long pedestrian path built of granite blocks and lined with 200 trees and dozens of planters filled with 50,000 flowers. Buses traverse the path up and down for passengers to ride for free.

To celebrate Erick’s birthday yesterday, we went to a food court somewhere along the Street Mall for lunch. Then we had an afternoon snack at Arby’s before heading to Pepsi Center for the Rookie Challenge.

Last Friday, a second wave of Filipinos flew in. Solar chief operating officer Peter Chanliong, Solar vice president for finance Ronald Tieng, Solar marketing director for sports Rico Arce and Solar marketing manager for sports Martin David arrived to witness the All-Star Weekend and confer with NBA officials.