It’s a good thing the central planners of the Democratic National Committee have scheduled Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech for an outdoor football stadium versus the cramped basketball arena they call the Pepsi Center.

Most delegates are not seated on the “coveted floor” but in the grandstands usually reserved for special guests, big donors and party hacks. It took me half an hour to navigate my way to where the California delegation was sitting, squeezing my way past the CNN booth, which took up valuable space on the floor.

Amid the crush of dark suits, I was at one point plastered up against 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern and a car load of senators, governors and journalists trying to get a story.

Adam Gottlieb, a photographer from Sacramento, described the floor experience as akin to “being in a fish tank, under water without oxygen.”

Searching the rafters of the California delegation for Rep. Mike Thompson, D- St. Helena, who had not yet arrived in Denver, one delegate told me that California and New York were “probably being punished for voting for Hillary.”

Earlier that day we attended a Women’s EqualiTEA sponsored by the National Organization for Women at the University Club, a downtown relic resembling an Ivy League hall with wood paneling and stained-glass windows.

At least 16 female, Democratic members of Congress spoke to the crowd of mostly women, a decidedly Hillary crowd, urging them to continue the battle for reproductive rights and equal pay, while outside scores of young pro-lifers waved huge posters of abandoned fetuses.

One of the protesters tried to block the door, shouting obscenities at the attendees through his bullhorn.

Inside, Sen. Barbara Boxer and representatives Maxine Waters, Jackie Speier, Lynn Woolsey and others admonished their flock to keep the faith. A cluster of college-age girls wore black T-shirts with the slogan, ”Go vote, Go run, Go lead, Go girl!”

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, told me how far women have progressed in her lifetime. Many of the women in the crowd were wearing beautiful picture buttons of Stephanie Tubbs Jones —the first African-American female congressperson from Ohio and a staunch Hillary supporter who died just last week.

It was time to head out to the Pepsi Center. Lynn and I and got off the shuttle because the bus was not moving, due to the assembled anarchists and angry young protesters who were blocking the streets.

We walked the 10 blocks to the security line, where a wave of humanity was funneled down to a mere trickle. At one point I found myself next to Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, whom Time Magazine has dubbed one of five “Hotshots to Watch.”

She bemoaned the fact that she had to enter through security with lowly commoners like myself.

For me, the first evening of the convention felt a little like Camelot. The delegates seemed delightfully surprised to hear from “the last brother,” Sen. Edward Kennedy, in person. He was introduced by Carolyn Kennedy, also the last in her family.

The “old Liberal Lion” of the Senate, “Uncle Teddy” told the throng that nothing would keep him from being there and passing the torch to the next generation led by Barack Obama, “The hope rises again, and the dream lives on.” The crowd went mad.

Michelle Obama’s featured speech ended at 9 p.m. local, 11 p.m. on the east coast, to the Stevie Wonder tune, “Isn’t She Lovely.” Her two young daughters were brought out while talking to their father, via technology I do not understand. He was watching the speeches with the Gerardo family in St. Louis.

The torch had been passed, a new generation of leadership acknowledged, and 30,000 witnesses flooded out of the arena into the night in search of another party. We ended up at a dessert reception hosted by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who remains at home in San Francisco tending a broken ankle.

We got back to the hotel late and shuffled through a pile of invitations of tantalizing parties, panel discussions and flesh-pressing events to attend the next day.