Dear faithful readers ( all 3 of you ),

I am ashamed to admit I still do not have an iPhone. It is, as they say, 'in the mail'; I am not strong enough in the Force to endure the gauntlet as Travis did. I can however affirm every last indignity suffered by the fools who lined up at the Rogers Plus store at Broadway and Arbutus to maybe get a phone, at least those I experienced prior to leaving at 9am. A brief synopsis of my own experience:

5:35AM: I arrive at the store, take my place as 53rd in line. I begin to seriously doubt that I will get a phone at all, let alone in a timely fashion. I stick around anyway - they said breakfast, right? I dreamily imagine Rob Feenie on location serving us up delicious Fois Gras and Andouille Eggs Benny shortly after 8.

5:36AM -> 7:50AM: I try and avoid getting on camera, bullshit with other people in line, procure some essentially bad but still welcome coffee, eat the one lousy Granola bar they give us for 'breakfast'. Some notable thoughts during this ~2 1/2 hour stretch:

• an obnoxious number of people in line around me already *have* iPhones
• any attempt to ascertain the number of phones at the store is met with stone-walling.
• the best way to make sure CityTV doesn't use their shots of you on the news is to finger the camera ( I hope? )
• There is some Rogers exec/stooge inside talking to press who kept obsessively wiping the screen of the phone in his hand with a cloth. At first we jeer this as taunting, but after a while the incessant wiping gets a bit creepy.

7:50AM: There is a brief flurry of excitement as reps come out and ask who in line wants 8GB phones. Almost no-one does.

8:00 AM: The first guy in line goes in, starts the purchase process amid a buzz of media. They let another 4 people in to start the purchase process as well. We immediately give these First Five™ cute nicknames:

1. Purple shirt, the first guy in ( self explanatory )
2. Camper, later re-named knife-guy or 'razor', I'll explain in a second. He was wearing a Red vs Blue shirt.
3. Pink Lady ( wearing a Pink jacket )
4. Track Suit ( see #1 )
5. 'Jonah', dubbed thus because of his striking resemblance to Jonah Hill of 'Super Bad' fame.

8:00AM -> 8:50AM: We watch, spell-bound as time ticks by slowly and still the First Five™ customers sit in the store, waiting for the Rogers people to actually activate their accounts and give them their phones. There is a brief flurry of excitement as 'Camper' is seen taking a mini-size box-cutter razor to his new white 16GB iPhone 3G in an apparently mis-guided attempt to remove the stock SIM card. He eventually digs the SIM removal tool out of the box, by which time we have already dubbed him 'Razor' or 'Knife Guy' and are arguing the relative merits of each name.

Also at this time people start to trickle away from the line. One guy who works for Rogers' media arm learns from his girlfriend of an email sent to all Rogers employees that they would not be allowed to get iPhones on the first day. Don't feel to bad for him though, he already *has* an iPhone. Another 3 guys re-locate to the Kerrisdale after confirming there is almost no line-up there.

8:50AM: The First Five™ are STILL in the store, and looking pretty pissed off. I have a 10AM meeting with the CEO, so I duck out, head home, head into work.

11:25AM: I call Rogers, get on hold. Thank god one of the few features that still works on my current phone is the hands-free earphone / mic system.

12:15: I get through to a sales rep, order a black 16GB, confirm the details of my plan, and am told to expect delivery on Tuesday!

1:30PM: I drop by the Rogers kiosk in Pac Centre. There is no line and they still have some 8GB models available. 16GB or die, I say.