I’ve been asked to go to a number of gaming events, both public and invitation-only, over the last few years. Yet I always seem to come up with an excuse to miss them. This year, I finally decided that I needed to make it out to an event. It wouldn’t kill me to chuck my other responsibilities aside for a week and have some fun. Enter PAX 2007…

Be warned, this write-up doesn’t focus on games at all; it focuses on the people I saw and the shenanigans that I got into, because in the end PAX for me is more about hanging out with good friends and interacting with the community, not about playing games (though I still did plenty of that). So, if you want a bunch of previews, you should probably not read this blog. Hell, you probably shouldn’t read this blog anyway. Also, as usual, this entry is far longer and more detailed than it needs to be. Yeah, moving on…

I headed out to Seattle on Thursday afternoon, though I never really expected to make it there. By this point it has become well known among my group of friends that I am awful at Mario games on the DS, and tend to get frustrated rather easily. We were all convinced that while I was playing on the plane I was going to make a stupid mistake, cause some big scene, and in all likelihood get arrested. Yet much to everyone’s amazement (and perhaps disappointment), I was able to play Mario without a single aggro outburst, and arrived in Seattle without incident.

I was met at the airport by Andrew, Mercedes, Talli, and Sara. Talli quickly left to go hang with some cooler people, and the remaining four of us decided to hit every grocery store in the Puget Sound area on a hunt for alcohol, ice, and other essentials (it would seem that there is no such thing as a liquor store that is open at night in Seattle). During our adventure we (and by ‘we’ I mean Sara) polluted some kids’ minds at Fatburger and forever shattered the innocence of the Fred Meyer supermarket chain. I’ll never look at a turkey baster the same way again.

After a few hours of driving and going to random stores we got to Eric’s house and exchanged greetings with everyone who was already there. Beating the odds, I was not murdered by certain Canadians, possibly because I paid the money I owed for my less-than-stellar Warthog driving. We spent most of the night talking about random things and throwing gummi Diddy Kongs at each other, a fun game for all ages. Later in the night Chloe and Mercedes went out for a walk, and expert navigators that they are, got lost. I went outside to try and help them find their way back, realizing that Eric’s neighborhood would be hard for even Magellan to map out. Attempting to give directions over the phone, the two eventually found their way back (on a side note, Chloe wasn’t wearing shoes or socks during this several-hour walk. She’s smart). Everyone then started to pass out in preparation for the next day’s events.

On Friday we all mounted up and headed to PAX, but first it was decided that we needed to go to yet more grocery stores, including one store that was literally right next to Bungie. Talk about a tease. We eventually made our way to the convention center, and marveled at the epic gathering of nerds, dorks, and geeks from all corners of the world. I was attacked by Chloe and forced to wear a princess crown that showed that I was “Gamerchix-approved.” Andrew, Eric, and a number of other guys suffered the same fate. A group of us spent a few hours on the exhibition floor, but we eventually got a hankering for some Halo action and went to the free play area to play some Halo 2. We played on Xboxes with copies of the game that were completely untouched by autoupdates and patches, so Mercedes, Andrew, and I decided to have some fun and do a bunch of glitches that are harder to pull off with current versions of H2. We started to gather quite a crowd, with one person even asking if what we were doing was allowed (don’t worry, it was). Unfortunately, our fun was cut short by a power surge which killed most of the TVs and consoles that were in the room, so we decided to call it a day.

That night Andrew, Mercedes, and I went down to Gameworks where a bunch of MVPs and other community members were gathering (although I had no idea at the time, apparently the gathering was Trixie’s ‘FreedomFest’). Instead of playing games though, it seemed that the bar was the gathering place for everyone.  At one point a drunken Feelz Good attempted to pass off his rather large bar tab on Andrew and Sara, but they bounced it right back to him. Sometime after midnight we realized that we hadn’t had a real meal in about twelve hours, and the bar was out of food, so Chloe, Merc, and I set off to find a McDonalds that was said to be right down the street. It wasn’t. We somehow ended up walking into a not-so-great part of town, and encountered a number of interesting (read: crazy) people. After passing a few questionable establishments and getting at least one vile comment from a random dude who I hope for his sake was drunk, we came to the conclusion that McDonalds didn’t exist and found a Subway instead.

Instead of driving for 45 minutes back to Eric’s house, Andrew, Merc, and I decided to crash with Chloe and Sara at Sara’s hotel for the night. The hotel room was amazing, but nevertheless only had one bed. The solution? The four others slept in the bed while I built a fort out of blankets and pillows and slept in there. It seemed like the most mature thing to do. We all then passed out as the Disney Channel played on the TV and inappropriate jokes circulated among the five of us. Have I mentioned the maturity?

Chloe and Sara were forced to wake up early on Saturday and head down to the show, but the remaining three of us slept in and by the time we all woke up the day’s event was half over and we had been sleeping for nearly twelve hours. But at least our sleep deprivation was cured eh? Before we left the hotel I scribbled a note identifying my great fort, and much to my amazement, when we came back later we discovered that housekeeping had left the fort alone. They probably thought I was five, but oh well.

The three of us met Bob for lunch in the convention center, where he informed us of his control scheme in Halo 3 (if you know Bob, you’ll immediately know what scheme is his when you look at the options in the game). We joked around for a bit, I nearly knocked over the table we were eating at, and then we headed upstairs to the event. Having already seen the floor, I spent much of the day hanging out with Chloe and Sara at the Gamerchix booth and entertaining myself by playing with the Vision Camera that gamerscoreblog had set up. The booth had nametags laid out that attendees could take and write their gamertag on, and I was impressed with how many tags I recognized, either through the Xbox.com forums or other community sites. It’s always interesting to meet forum and community regulars who you know of but have never really talked to. Perhaps most amusingly, several of the people who came up to the booth I distinctly remember banning from the forums at one point or another. Needless to say, I didn’t talk to them too much.  

Heading back to Eric’s for his annual PAX party that evening, we made the effort to cram six people into Andrew’s craptastic PT Cruiser: Myself, Andrew, Chloe, Mercedes, Sara, and Rip. Amazingly, we all somehow managed to get seat belts on (though at one point a passing cop still gave us a nasty look), despite the fact that it took forever for all of us to get in. We decided to stop at McDonalds on the way back, but instead of doing the logical thing and going through the drive thru, we made the choice to go in. Yet right after we got out of the clown car we changed our minds again and decided to go to the drive thru, forcing us to spend another eternity getting back in the vehicle. When giving our order, the drive thru attendant gave us a weird look. What, you’ve never seen four people stuffed into the back seat of a PT Cruiser before?

Eric’s party was a lot of fun, with drunkenness abundant (as expected). The Colin-lympics were held, and as expected Andrew took home the gold. Andrew’s drink consisting of vodka and Halo 3 Game Fuel, which he termed the Acescrew, was a huge hit, with Max going so far as to declare it the official drink of Halo 3. Eric and Mercedes got really aggro at the Seahawks game that Eric had put on, Tammy was going around biting people, I got a balloon celebrating my apparent 16th birthday, Fatty Chubs got his ass kicked in GH2, we watched the Spartans kill a bunch of Persians in nice HD, and we learned that the giraffe is in another castle. The low point of the night? Chloe stealing my bag of Skittles so they could be used as poker chips. That was just pure evil.

Sunday at the show was somewhat slow, as we had done just about everything by that point. Most of the people crashing at Eric’s didn’t even go, and Chloe got sick and went home early. Andrew, Merc, and I went to the show with Sara, since she was doing booth duty, but the three of us decided to stay for some reason (seriously guys, why were we there?) We watched the Mass Effect demo approximately 15,764 times, mingled with the same people repeatedly, and ran into KP and his posse a couple of times. At the end of the day we saw Gabe and Tycho duke it out 1v1 on Halo 3’s recently-revealed Guardian map, which I have to admit was cool but over way too quickly. We then set off to drop off Sara at the airport, driving aimlessly for a while before stopping at Denny’s for some food. Wow, what an experience it was. The people sitting in the booth behind us were freaks to say the least, and I’m not going to even repeat a lot of what they said. Listening in on their psycho conversation provided quite a bit of amusement, with their best part being them saying you should never meet anyone you talk to online, to which the four of us erupted in laughter. We continued to make jerks of ourselves (though I think Andrew won with a certain comment about zoos and albino children. I don’t think I need to elaborate), with Mercedes leaving a big tip to “make up for us being asses.” We dropped Sara off at SeaTac, which apparently was right next to Denny’s the entire time (and we had no idea), and headed back to Eric’s. Chloe and I then caught up on all the Inuyasha that we had been missing, which caused everyone else in the house to instantly pass out. They obviously don’t know good TV.

Monday was a lazy day. PAX was over and most people were gone, so the remaining stragglers and I spent most of the day watching such quality programs as Thundercats and Star Blazers that Eric had on DVD. Star Blazers was good, but Eric, it’s still no Voltron. We also watched Grandma’s Boy, which I had never seen but always wanted to watch. The number of gamer stereotypes in that movie (both true and false) is amazing, and was a perfect way to close a gaming event. I also played a bit of Guitar Hero II, which I had never played and never intended to play. I’ve never had an interest in such games, but it was actually a lot of fun, especially when playing it in the company of friends. I’m still not going to buy it, but I do have the urge to play it again. Thanks for that Chloe…  

We got up on Tuesday and went out for breakfast, where I was put to shame by discovering that Mercedes could eat more than me (wait, why am I repeating that here?). We then went to the airport, I said my goodbyes, and then struggled to keep myself from puking at the thought that I might have to go another year before seeing everyone again. I barely made my plane to Phoenix, but found out that it hardly mattered as my flight to Flagstaff had been cancelled. I got a boarding pass for the next flight, but it kept getting delayed. Luckily, I had my laptop with me and free wi-fi in the terminal so I was able to hop on messenger and talk to Chloe, Tammy, Matt, and Dustin to keep myself from dying of boredom. Thanks for entertaining me guys, I appreciate it.  

The flight finally went through and I got home around 1 am, a good eight hours or so later than I should have, to find my roommate, certainly not a night owl, already dead asleep. Is it time to go back to Seattle yet?