As you know, here at AYBOnline, we’ve set out on a journey to PAX Prime to deliver you some great interviews news, previews, and other gaming info. Today, we touched down in Seattle (well, Bellevue actually) two days before the event begins, and we’ve already started our fun.
We’ve confirmed multiple interviews and appointments (no spoilers on who), and planned our days in advance. I’ll also be writing up summaries (like this one) of our daily shinanigrams, which will go up as soon as they can – keep in mind that we’re 2 hours behind you all now (hello from the past!), and many of these events go late into the night, so there may be a little bit of a delay.
With that in mind, let’s get right into my quick summary of today. It won’t have a whole lot to do with gaming, but it will help give you a bit of an insight into the out-of-town convention lifestyle.
Today, we set out from Winnipeg Richardson International Airport, arriving at 4:00 AM, and departing at 6:30 AM.
We flew over half of Canada and a good chunk of the states, with smoking mountains below us for most of the trip. Honestly, it’s tragic that the beautiful Alberta landscape is blanketed in smoke and fire. But every so often the mountains would peak above the smoke, and we would get a bit of the gorgeous Western Canada scenery.
After touching down in SEA-TAC, we made our way to our hotel, and began exploring Bellevue. We arrived a bit earlier than expected and couldn’t check in to our room, so we checked our bags, and took a long walk to kill the time (and shake some of the rust off of our legs in preparation for the expo). Honestly, Washington is truly beautiful. Just behind our hotel we found a park that is a little slice of the deep woods. You wouldn’t even know you were still in the city; it was all tall trees and god rays, and just a few meters into the treeline the sound of traffic melted away into the sound of birds and a light breeze.
When we got back and checked in, we arrived to a clogged toilet (d’oh). After quickly getting that fixed, we emailed a few developers, set up interview appointments, and then had a few weird American beers to celebrate. It was only about 2:00 PM at this point, but hey whatever man – internally it was 4:00 PM and we’d been up since 4:00 AM. It’s really weird departing a city at 6:30 AM, travelling for 5 tired hours, but arriving at 9:00 AM. It feels a bit like I went back in time. The trip back is going to be a bit less awesome.
Then, after emailing a few more developers, and planning our schedules a bit more, we wrapped up our day with some awesome Indian food from a nearby restaurant. Honestly, if you’re ever in Bellevue, I highly recommend India Gate restaurant. It was hands down the absolute best Indian food I have ever had.
So here we are, at the end of our first day in Seattle, two days before the event. Time for an early night (after a few more beers of course). Tomorrow we’ll be picking up our PAX passes, and a few of the unofficial events begin that evening. We’ll be bringing you coverage of the late night tinyBuild Party Hard Launch Party! Tomorrow’s summary will be combined with coverage of Friday’s events, so watch for it then.
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Jake Carewick is a Contributing Editor to aybonline.com.
