December 20, 2011

Missed opportunity in Denver

Coordinating a cross-country occutour is trickier than you might think. Especially when you’ve got nothing but an Amtrak ticket and the good graces of old friends to help you get around. Thus, sometimes travel decisions I make mean I’m going to miss some pretty critical coverage.

And so it was yesterday when I jumped on a train heading west out of Denver about 12 hours before Occupy activists there lit their make-shift sidewalk shanties ablaze before the police had a chance to remove them. Here’s the video from the Denver Post:

I knew Occupiers were meeting with the new police chief Monday morning, and my initial plan was to report on that and then hitch a ride in a Winnebago down to Albuquerque, New Mexico with a couple who offered a ride a Craigslist. But the Southwest was slated to get hit by a major snow storm, so I bailed on that option.

Amtrak only leaves Denver once a day and it’s a 33-hour trip to Oakland, my next stop now that I have put off the southwest for the time being (I may just double around on my way back east), so I decided to leave Monday morning rather than wait until Tuesday. I wanted to get two days of reporting in Oakland before heading up the North Coast in time to be in my old stomping grounds of Ashland for Christmas.

In hindsight, I should have stayed in Denver last night, left for the Pacific Coast this morning and planned on some Christmas camping on the Lost Coast.

— Bob Plain