Pick Me Up!

Every gaming event that I’ve attended has required me to take a bus. In fact I will choose to take a bus every time because it’s just a hell of a lot easier. The Late Night Gamer crew has done the “driving to events” thing in the past and it was way too much of a hassle. I don’t think I’ll ever drive to an event again. Here’s the story…

A couple years ago we (Charles, Tim,  Nick, and Tim’s brother) made the last minute choice to attend New York Comicon for the weekend. We met up in VT at Nick’s place  and began the drive to NYC at 2am. Six hours later we made it to our hotel, parked, and took the train into the city. NYCC opened it’s doors at 10 and we spent the entire day playing video games, perusing comic books, and marveling at the immense amount of geek paraphernalia that was being shown. Of note, Charles ate two 20 piece boxes of chicken McNuggets for lunch. in case you didn’t do the math, that’s 40 chicken nuggets. He’s a beast. Aside from the normal convention hours activities of panels, previews and swag collection; another important piece for us is attending the parties. We enjoy meeting like-minded gamers and geeks that can join us in imbibing a “few” tasty beverages. That night we attended an IGN meet and greet at a bowling alley on the Hudson River. Despite the $10 Sam Adams pints that we initially purchased, it was a good time. Afterward we decided to walk the city and go see the  “Occupy Wall Street” movement that was happening at that time. 80 blocks later, it was after midnight and we had seen enough of the tent village that had been constructed. It was time to catch the train before it shut down for the night. The first station we stopped at was closed and required us to walk an additional number of blocks to get to a station that was open.  Finally at the train,  it took us another hour to get back to the hotel. We were relieved to be able to get a decent night’s sleep since it was 2:30am and we had all been awake for 34 of the past 36 hours. We got up to the room only to find that our reservation had been screwed up and we were left with a smoking room and only one double bed between 4 guys in their mid-twenties. It was the last room available. Needless to say, nobody slept very well that night and the drive home was very long.

Not all of those things have to do with driving to events, but I now correlate all those things with not taking a bus. Granted, it was an adventure and we all had a great time despite the expensive beer, long walks, sleep deprivation, small hotel rooms, and 4000 calories worth of chicken nuggets. Want to drive somewhere? Nah. The bus can pick me up.

-Nick

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