COVID-19 is definitely a thing right now, so my trip to Boston for PAX East wasn’t really that much of a “trip,” but rather, hiding indoors and away from people until I actually had to go to the Convention Center to do my panel, then scurrying to the Convention Center to speak, then running away as quickly as possible. … But it was still a nice experience.

That picture of the Magic: The Gathering area is actually one of the very few photos I have of my PAX East experience. After my co-workers and I completed our panel, we stopped by the MTG area so a few of them could compete, and I sat down in the least-populated area possible while waiting for them to finish before going to dinner.

The panel itself turned out acceptably overall, and actually pretty well considering it was the first in-person live panel that a few of my other co-workers did. We let our Content Director take care of the logistics of the panel, and he decided to call the panel “Esports 101,” which ended up not really being that relevant of a title, but we still went over the general basics of running an esports company and finding success in the esports industry in the coming year.

Our Senior Partnerships Manager actually did an exceptional job at answering questions, which made it a bit tougher for me, so whenever it was relevant for me to speak, I ended up going on tangents and sharing other related advice as supplemental information to the topics discussed and questions asked. I guess I’m happy it ended up that way—me going on tangents is probably the most on-brand thing that I personally could have done.

My favorite moment of the broadcast was when I was captured staring disappointingly into my microscopic water cup as I realized that I was already out of water and there was still about half an hour left to go in the panel.

After we wrapped everything up at the Convention Center, our team dinner was at a restaurant by the water. I let our other staff members take care of pretty much all the travel logistics so I could just go from place-to-place in peace, so I don’t even know what restaurant we went to, but they had amazing lobster rolls. It also had a decent view behind us, though it was a bit too dark to actually see the rich texture and vastness of the ocean.

These are my takeaways from Boston:

1. It’s way too cold in the winter, and my brain literally stops working if I’m outside for more than like a minute and a half.
2. The Boston Convention Center has quite literally the worst convention food I have ever tasted out of all the convention centers I’ve ever been in… and I’ve been to a lot of convention centers.
3. The city feels anciently old, but it’s like a clean and well-maintained old, so it’s actually pretty pleasant. That may be surprising coming out of my mouth, because I’m someone who likes ultra-modern aesthetics. I walked through a random alleyway to go to an Uber pick-up area, and even the alley looked and smelled clean.
4. Boston is the first big city where I haven’t seen homeless people, which is surprising because every other city of this size seems to be layered with homeless people.

With that trip complete, here is my updated travel map:

I hate traveling, and that’s a pretty well-known fact by those who are familiar with me, but I feel like a disliking of travel should not stop you from gaining new and unique experiences. So, I decided to adventure out into the Midwest and visit Jordan King (known online as Genserik) in Nebraska, and take a road trip to Oklahoma for some work-related tasks.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really do a very good job taking photographs and videos during this trip (and the ones I did take give an inside look at Jordan’s family, which is not something that I would want to share online on my website for the world to see). But, I have a few highlights, the first one being eating Runza for the first time.

Runza is apparently a restaurant chain only available in Nebraska that sells what appears to be wrap-like sandwiches. I got a beef and mushroom Runza sandwich, and it was quite intriguing – the oiliness and “heaviness” of the meal made it feel like I was eating one of the unhealthiest foods I’ve ever had in my life.

I also held Jordan’s 1.5-month-old baby, which (to my knowledge) is the very first interaction I’ve had with an infant so young. I’ve always had an issue in the past with me not liking children (even though, for whatever reason, they seem to like me), so because of that, I’ve never really bothered to go out of my way to learn about how to handle a tiny infant. Jordan captured this moment for me – here is a photo of me looking very confused that a baby is laying in my arms:

That baby isn’t Jordan’s only child; he also has a 4-year-old daughter. I let her use one of my spare cameras while I was there and had her take a bunch of photos. She seemed to particularly enjoy snapping pictures of regular household objects and walls, but then she realized that she could photograph people as well. She told me to look into the camera, but the height difference still made it a bit difficult for her:

During our Oklahoma road trip, Jordan captured a few interesting moments. Considering his uncontrollable laughter, his favorite seemed to be while we were on the phone with one of the former executive producers at Tempo Storm, when, seemingly in an effort to ensure my voice would get through the microphone properly, Jordan angled the phone towards me and blinded me by reflecting the sun straight into my eyes:

On the way back from Oklahoma, we had to drive through a massive blizzard, which was not exactly what one would consider a great travel experience. Luckily, Jordan was driving (the drive was just over 6 hours, and I took a 4+ hour shift at the beginning and gave the final 2 hours to Jordan, because we knew that a snowstorm would be coming up). He’s far more experienced at driving in snow than I am, so he (literally) slid and drifted us to safety back to his home.

… I was in too much of a state of panic to actually remember to photograph the snowstorm.