Day one. Technically we had arrived in Boston the night before, so we could get a good night's sleep before PAX. At this point, enforcers (the security volunteers), vendors and the Penny Arcade staff have been in Boston setting up the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center for a couple of days. Preparing 516,00 square feet of exhibit space for 60,000+ geeks. That's exhibit space, not hallways and walkways and bathrooms. (Funny story, this is the first time I've ever been in a place where there were NO lines for the women's restrooms. They had to reassign some of the women's restrooms to men's, and there was even a gender neutral bathroom. I'm not talking a "family" restroom, a full, male/female/whatever bathroom.)
First order of business: well, breakfast. Our hotel was in the theater district, nearly 100 years old! Since our hotel was on PAX circuit (very close, with shuttles coming and going to the convention center every 20 minutes or so) there were a lot of people staying there that were also going to PAX. You can pick these people out...sometimes it's just a geeky shirt, other times they got fully costumed before hitting the continental breakfast. There we met Brenda and Bobby, two co-workers from New Hampshire (I think?) who we chatted with while we ate. They'd been to many PAXes before. We split after breakfast, but found them again in the shuttle line downstairs. After waiting for a bit, and two giant busses PACKED with geeks that just didn't have the room for us, we decided to walk to the convention center. The convention center was only about a mile away from our hotel. This would be pretty much the extent of all the sightseeing we would be doing while in Boston.
Brenda and Bobby safely navigated us to the convention...while I stared up at buildings like a tourist. So many beautiful architectural details...after growing up and seeing mainly western, modern type buildings. This was just one gorgeous building after another.
Crap, I think this is going to take more than one post per day. And some slideshows.If you're more interested in seeing the pictures and not waiting for my grand exposition, feel free to hit up my Flickr page and scroll through.