You know you’re on your way to Denver when…

… the gate agent announces that after the people in wheelchairs, they’ll be boarding “media with large cameras” BEFORE the elite, supermagnumelite, and hyperplatinumdoublemegaelite passengers..

… you’re seated in a middle seat between a lobbyist on your left and an delegate from Illinois on your right…

… the lobbyist is complaining that there won’t be any good parties this time because of new strict ethics rules on gifts and so she’ll have to find someway to fill the time, like listening to Madeleine Albright talk about foreign affairs…

… the delegate from Illinois is remembering how not so long ago no one in Chicago believed for a minute that Barack Obama could win a seat in the US Senate …

… the airport is full of cheerful volunteers welcoming and helping you and momentarily making you think perhaps you’ve landed at the Beijing Olympics….

… you get on the highway and the sky is suddenly very, very big… almost implausibly, frighteningly big with at least three separate weather systems going on including a very fat rainbow…

… fellow reporters tell you that it can take up to an hour to get through various gauntlets of security to get to the media center that has been conveniently located in tents OUTSIDE the convention center… because that’s the logic place to put people who have come to find out what’s going on inside.