Did I mention having a very hard time adjusting to the altitude and low humidity of Denver?

I developed a headache on Monday which I just couldn’t shake, and at home I haven’t had a headache in years. I drank enough water to float but it didn’t seem to do much good. Finally a friend said “electrolytes” as well as water were needed. A couple of Gatorade’s from the hotel and I was okay, but it was a less than pleasant experience.

Congresswoman Mazie Hirono, who represents Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District (including Kaaawa), arrived in Denver on Sunday with husband Leighton Oshima and found that her room at the Marriott Denver South wasn’t ready.

As she tells the story, she then asked for another available room and was told specific room assignments had been made by planners at the Democratic National Committee, which had booked the blocks of hotel rooms. The hotel wasn’t free to just make a shift.

It was, perhaps, a small indication of how centralized the planning of this vast logistical and political enterprise has been.

Turns out I wasn’t the only veteran making his first trip to a national convention. I’m told this was also a first for political analyst, columnist, and UH West Oahu prof Dan Boylan, who was there with KGMB, although I didn’t have a chance to confirm that with him.

And it was also the first national convention for Kate Stanley, a former Hawaii legislator, once the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who now lobbies for the Department of Education.

Stanley said she was a senior in high school during the 1960 convention that launched John F. Kennedy to the presidency. She recalls her father listening to the convention (I’m not sure if he listened on the radio or watched on tv) and keeping track of the roll call vote so that he would know when (or whether) Kennedy would get the party’s nod.

She recalls when he looked up and said, “Kathleen, he’s got it.”

She also said that while this is her first convention, it might also be her last. I think she was referring to the impact of the grueling schedule of convention events, but I could be wrong.

Stanley originally came to Hawaii as a Vista volunteer (Volunteers in Service to America) and describes herself as having a community organizing background. She’s excited by Obama’s candidacy in part because she points to Barack’s experience as a community organizer. “You know a lot of things” as a result of such experience, Stanley says.

State Rep. Mark Takai got a hot tip that the rail station at Invesco Field had been quietly opened again on Thursday after being closed for security reasons during the first three days of the convention. So he got off the train thinking that he would have an easy time walking to the stadium to hear Obama’s speech. Wrong. He ended up hitting one roadblock after another, milling around with thousands of others unable to find an entrance, and eventually walking several miles around the entire perimeter of Invesco Field before finding a way inside. His version of the expedition is much longer, of course.

I also heard a story last night of people who were standing in a very slow moving security line for hours and didn’t finally get inside until Biden was speaking, which was not too long before 8 p.m. Ouch.

Another tidbit heard from a good source. The guy who programs the computer graphics on the various Invesco scoreboard displays did his work in advance and took off for Hawaii. He was actually in Honolulu when his graphics hit the national stage in such a big way.

I had to look twice at the photo one of the Hawaii delegates was brandishing at breakfast one day. She took it while biking around Denver when she passed the Caldwell-Kirk Mortuary. No, it wasn’t a play on Rep. Kirk Caldwell’s career options, although seeing the name certainly prompted a quick run down that path.

WHAT? Alaska? Hawaii?

Four years ago, who would have thought that candidates with strong links to the last two states to be added to the U.S. would be on the GOP and Dem tickets this year?

Gov. Palin of Alaska as the GOP VP choice? The state’s population was only 627,000 in 2000, just slightly over half the size of Hawaii, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The governor is a relative unknown to the outside of conservative Republican circles.

And, as someone asked at breakfast yesterday, if Obama is elected will Honololulu provide the Camp David of his administration?

Okay, the convention is over. It was my first experience of such a national gathering. Of course it had its warts, both in terms of logistics and politics.

Not all constituencies were wholly pleased with Obama’s big speech, which offered something for everyone in the newly enlarged Democratic tent but also left some believing they deserved a bigger piece of the whole.

But the overwhelming sense underlying all the differences, regional and ideological, is a common understanding that the last eight years of W have beggared the country while further enriching the wealthy, and have put the country further at risk in unnecessary wars and an abandonment of international alliances.

The show last night was staged and finely choreographed, the speeches driven by the huge teleprompters arrayed in front of the stage, but the excitement of delegates, family, and friends, the anticipation, the welcoming of this opportunity for moving the country in a different direction, the desire to make a difference, and the commitment to work towards this end over the next 60-somthing days, this was real and fundamental, and reflected in people’s faces, their tears, their shouts of approval.

I heard many people, including both Obama and Clinton supporters, crediting both of the Clintons for masterful speeches that should bring their grassroots into the campaign during this key period.

I admit coming away with an appreciation for how many articulate grassroots Democrats I met from all parts of the country, coming different circumstances and life experiences. I met people on the streets, on the trains, in the convention center, who were the best promoters of the Democratic agenda because it was/is part of their lives.

If the purpose of this convention was to recognize, reward, and foster that underlying spirit, it was a big success. It’s success at moving voters outside of the Democratic Party remains to be seen.

I can understand the anger of the anti-war protesters outside the convention at the political compromises that have been made and continue to be made. But even the somewhat watered down results reflected in Obama’s campaign rhetoric and the party platform appear to be way better than where we’ve been for the past eight years.

To tell the truth, I’m most concerned about foreign policy. If Obama is elected, I can foresee a Lyndon Johnson kind of era, with progressive social legislation moving through Congress but bookended by continuing wars as the macho posturing of both parties continue to trap us in military responses to international problems.

Last night, I heard contradictory signals. On the one hand, there was a line about not being able to fight an international terrorist network active in 80 countries via war in Iraq. On the other, a call for escalation of the war in Afghanistan against both Bin Laden and the Taliban.

It may be good campaign rhetoric, but I’m afraid such simple calls for action miss the complex politics of the region.

Bottom line. I don’t really like crowd scenes, I’m not enamored of party politics, but this whole experience was well worth the effort. I’m glad that I came and was able to be part of the action.