One thing you can say about Colorado: Being a mile above sea level, it'll never have its own New Orleans flood.

Another thing you can say about Colorado: The alternative is not all that preferable.

Shortly after landing in Denver, I was explaining this to my friend, Prickly Phlox, by talking on my cellphone, which, like anything else we People of the Sea Level do within an hour of arriving in a high place, was making me pant heavily and want to go lie down for a week.

"How is Colorado?" she asked innocently.

"How is it?" I replied, pausing for a deep breath between the "how" and the "is."

"It's the same as always: My head feels like a 7-Up can under the back wheels of an earthmover.

"And did I mention the dry air? Walking out of Denver International is like walking into a pottery kiln: It sucks every last bit of moisture out of your being — as thoroughly as listening to a Dick Cheney speech vaporizes any trace of hope in your soul."

Knowing my proclivity for, ahem, exaggeration, Phlox dropped into her cut-the-crud tone and asked: "Is it really that bad?"

"Nah," I confessed. "But I am."

Therein lies the truth. But at least I have company. Let's face it: Those of us who live in the soggy bottoms around Puget Sound are altitude weenies of the highest order. Be honest. You know you're a certified member of the Order of Thick Air if:

• You get woozy ascending extreme spans of altitude, such as the distance between the ground and the front seat of your Toyota Tundra.

• You have ever developed pulmonary edema standing on your tiptoes to reach the last bottle of sun-dried tomatoes at Larry's Market.

• Glancing at a photograph of Mount Everest makes your lips chap, crack and begin to bleed.

• You pause to take mountaineering-style "rest steps" at extreme heights, such as the mezzanine level of McCaw Hall.

Before you start to get all down on yourself, realize that this condition applies to the slovenly, the obscenely fit, and everyone in between.

While it's clearly easier to adjust to altitudes and dry air if you're in better shape, everyone going from sea level to high level feels the big lead balloon tied to their head for a few days; it's simply a question of the size of the balloon.

Genetics clearly are a factor: Some people adjust to altitude changes fairly easily. Others feel their body wanting to crawl up inside itself and die, at least for a few days.

Then there are those — mountain climbers and athletes, for the most part — who subject themselves to this torture on purpose. Many Olympic speedskaters, cross-country skiers and the like lock themselves into "altitude rooms" to sleep at night.

U.S. speedskaters living in Milwaukee, which is near sea level, catch fitful zzzs in altitude rooms at the Pettit National Ice Center.

Recently, former skating great Bonnie Blair-Cruikshank donated cable service, TVs and DVD players for the rooms, making them just room-service away from a room at the Antlers Hilton in Colorado Springs, where a lot of us gathered last week at the U.S. Olympic Media Summit to interview probable 2006 Winter Olympians.

Sample question to speedskaters: Are you nuts?

Answer: Well, yes.

Anyone who intentionally attempts to get what passes for sleep in dry, thin air is clearly at least a half bubble off plumb — or wants to win awfully badly.

And the only reason altitude rooms were not banned by the Geneva Conventions is that nobody had come up with this particular variation on cruel-and-unusual yet.

To each his own 60-grit sandpaper skin.

Note to Bonnie Blair: Our own personal altitude rooms at the Hilton did not have DVD players. But they did offer all the other high-altitude advantages, such as waking yourself in the middle of the night by suddenly feeling the urge to inhale with the force required to suck a kosher dill pickle through a straw.

Oddly enough, a near-week of this high-altitude training seemed to do little for our overall fitness level, as evidenced by the fact that luggage on the Seattle side seemed even heavier than it had been in Denver.

And perhaps it was. The beautiful thing about spending time in the high/dry lands is the way all that moisture deprivation gives way to replenishing ecstasy the instant you return to the wetlands.

Half an hour after stepping off the plane last week, I was driving through a tasty Seattle mist when the cellphone rang again. It was Phlox.

"I can't talk right now," I snapped.

"Because you're driving?" she asked.

"No," I said, my eyes rolled back in my head with pleasure.

"I'm reconstituting."

Ron Judd's Trail Mix column appears here every Thursday. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.