Well ladies as gentlemen, we have finally arrived in Seattle after a long and harrowing journey. Having left Winnipeg ust after 6:00 A.M, the trip took a grand total of 30 hours with a meager 2 hours (at best) of sleep throught the trip. This, when combined with the 3 hours of sleep I got the night before resulted in us being very, very tired upon our arrival at our Embassy Suites Hotel. Thankfully, Seattle has no shortage of coffee shops and, finding a starbucks connected to a Gamestop, we took a moment to marvel in wonderment at such a perfect merger and were at a loss as to why we had not seen such a combination elsewhere. The moment soon passed however, and we scrambled to pump liquid consciousness into our body before continuing to explore the city.
The rest of the day was spent purchasing supplies from Target for the coming day (i.e snacks and water) and exploring the massive electronics store that is Frys for additional Cat 5 cables to bring to the LAN Parties. Other highlights included picking up a pizza from across the city, walking around a city not made for walking (see Parkour) and just generally complaining how tired we were once the caffeine wore off.
Returning to the hotel, we quickly transformed our room into a NOLAG base of operations, complete with 2 routers, 2 laptops, and an Xbox 360; which were nicely complimented by the Hotel’s 2 complimentry Flat Screen T.V’s. What remained of the evening was spent reminiscing over trip so far over episodes of Family Guy.
Highlights of the road trip to Seattle itself included nearly getting into a fight with a drunken Idahoian during a 3:00 A.M gas stop, eating a sandwich bigger then my head, and driving through a storm in Montana and subsequently seeing a double arched rainbow. The trip also reminded me of just how damn big Montana really is, as all the Age of Empires and Pokemon trivia in the world couldn’t make that 18 hour portion of the trip any less grueling.
For those of you desiring visual aides, fear not as we have uploaded a large gallery of images at the bottom of the article and will be doing so with every post. Unfortunately, many of the images were taken with an iPhone camera app, which lacked both zoom and a flash. Additionally, we drove through the Rockies at night, so for those wishing to see such images, your pretty much out of luck. With that said, I did take a few shots of the valley city of Butane and a photo at dawn of fog in the Rockies that reminded us of Silent Hill.
That just about wraps up our first report, but be sure to check back regularly as we bring you more on our PAX odyssey.
