The last day in Boston. Well, we woke up on time, had everything packed, and made our way quite uneventfully out of the hotel and on the road to the convention center. Sorry, nothing cute to report in the morning hours. I’m not one to mess around when check-out time is concerned. Too expensive.

The problem with Sunday was that I had to work on Monday, and the drive home was 18 hours with the stretch of driving alone being the last 4 hours. I figured I needed at least 6 solid hours of sleep to be able to function at work the next day after a 4 hour morning drive, which set the timeline to leave PAX by 2pm at the latest. We left the hotel slightly after 10am, then proceeded by car to the convention center.

I think I may have mentioned my initial experience driving through Boston as being slightly less than positive. Getting to the convention center was no exception to this. GPS took us on a route that was simply wrong, underneath the convention center to where the busses enter. There were no signs remotely helpful aside from the ones that said “No cars, ha ha bitch. Turn around.” So we did, and I was presented with difficulty. All directions available to me apparently led to some sort of freeway entrance. Except one, and that was the one that I didn’t take.

The turnpike entrance right near the convention center takes you nearly 7 miles outside of the city before there’s a potential exit from it, and there’s two tolls, somehow, before you can get turned around and head back into the city.  20 minutes later and we finally got near the convention center again. This time, ignoring GPS directions, we followed the path we had been walking for the past couple of days. Parking at the convention center was full, but there was a parking garage about 6 blocks further down.

Yeah, we parked there, got on a bus, and finally made it back into the con around noon. Needless to say, I was frustrated. Frustration leads to alcohol. I went to the bar. Two drinks later and I’m back to normal, or least more forgiving. Right, we had a goal when we made our way back into the con, and that was to get loot. We did a tour around the periphery of the booths where people were selling all manners of things, but nothing was really popping out for us to buy things.

Upstairs at the main entrance there was still a handful of PAX gear leftover but it was getting awfully scarce. They were out of a few t-shirts that looked interesting, and the selection of sizes. I met MC Frontalot, 579th greatest rapper in the world and bought Final Boss from him, even had it signed! I was also ridiculously surprised to see Graham from LoadingReadyRun in the booth next to him selling T-shirts, so I bought one of those too. By surprised I mean I actually said “Whoa! You’re here!” to which he replied “Yes! I am!”.  We laughed, cried, had a beer, made sweet love together, then I paid for the t-shirt and left. It was a weird moment.

At some point we also went back to the guild launch booth to bother Ferrel for our guild shirts. A short trip up to his room was accompanied by a brief conversation about some secret stuff that I might get myself shoehorned into. Blogging related I suppose. I regret not spending more time with those guys, but everything went by so fast. On the way out I stopped to grab some coffee at the Starbucks in the hotel and we wandered off to find the bus back to the parking garage.

Then the driving. There’s nothing to talk about with the driving this time around. We listened to both of the albums we bought back to back, which is some pretty good nerdcore stuff. Highly approved, recommended, yada (Hey look! Free singles!) yada. We took the NY turnpike almost straight out to Buffalo, then some other highway deep into the heart of Ohio. We ate at a rest stop in Buffalo and had some terrible pizza from what must have been the saddest girl I’d ever seen. I climbed into the back at around 10pm, wrote up PAX Day 1 and 2, then passed out for a bumpy ride. Kayin was dropped off around 4am, and I drove myself off to work.

All said and done, PAX was great, Boston was great. Definitely adding it to my list of things to do every year. Next time I’m taking a train. Driving isn’t nearly as exciting, nor rewarding, as I thought it might be.