The weather in Boston was rainy during our last two days there, so we decided to stay inside museums. First, John drove us to the MIT museum in Cambridge. Here are a couple pictures of Dash on the ride to the museum. He is sitting in the forward-facing car seat that John borrowed from a coworker. This was his first time (and so far, his only time) riding in a car facing forward.
Many of the exhibits were interactive, and the first one we encountered allowed us to play Tetris on a model of a building. Totally cool, and we knew right away that this was our kind of museum.
My favorite exhibits were Robots and Beyond (a history of robots and artificial intelligence) and Arthur Ganson’s mechanical sculptures. The coolest sculpture was Margot’s Cat (pictured on the right). A doll house chair passively bounces over a cat figurine that is sliding left and right and you never know which way the chair might spin. It was totally unpredictable and surprising.
After buying some souvenirs in the gift shop, we drove back to Jamaica Plain in the rain. On the way, we stopped at a comic book and game store to buy more Magic cards. This might have been Dash’s first time in a comic book store. In fact, Eric and I kept noting that this trip to Boston held many “firsts” for Dash – his first time flying on an airplane, his first time out of Virginia, his first time to a convention, etc.
Next, we met Cat and Justin for hot tea at Ula Cafe, which is next to the Samuel Adams Brewery. We played rummy while we dried off and warmed up from the cold and the rain. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to tour the brewery, even though it was on our itinerary.
For dinner, John cooked stir fry and edamame for us. It was great to have a home-cooked meal after eating out almost all weekend.
We drank white wine and ate dinner by candle light.
Eric, Cat, John, and I played Magic on the floor after dinner.
Just like old times, when they all lived in Richmond. It doesn’t get better than this.
The next morning, we went to Cat’s and Justin’s apartment for breakfast. Justin is a vegan and Eric is a vegetarian, so Cat cooked vegan chocolate chip pancakes and fake breakfast sausage. We also had coffee and orange juice.
Cat’s apartment is so very Cat & Justin. If you didn’t know them, you could learn a lot about them from studying the little vignettes all over their apartment.
Just by the way that they decorate their place, you could tell that they are sentimental about Richmond and that they are very much in love.
Almost all of their art is hand made.
And there are bikes and books everywhere.
After eating a hot breakfast at Cat’s cozy apartment, we ventured back into the rain and went to the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard. Photography wasn’t allowed, so I didn’t get any pictures… but the place was full of morbid medical oddities and historical surgical tools.
For lunch, we ate at a cheap Chinese restaurant near Emerson College, where Cat goes to graduate school.
Then, Cat showed us her office at Emerson College (she’s a teacher, too!) and the amazing view of the Boston Common from the same building.
Soon, it was time for John to take us to the airport. He dropped us off at Logan International and we said goodbye. But when we tried to check-in and print our tickets, we discovered that our flight had been canceled! It was canceled due to flooding caused by all the rain that had fallen during the previous two days. We immediately called John to ask him to pick us up, and we rescheduled our flight for the next morning while we waited for him to return.
It ended up being fortuitous that we got to stay another night because we got to accompany John to music night! Every Tuesday night, he meets with a group of guys to play music. John plays mandolin and sings, and I happened to record a few videos. I caught the end of Shady Grove, and most of Paradise by John Prine.
I got the chills because this is what my family used to do when I was growing up, but it’s been years since we’ve played together. It was nostalgic to see and hear John and his group play music like this, and to be able to share the moment with Eric and Dash.
Our flight home the next morning was uneventful, and Dash was easy to travel with. Traveling with a baby, especially one as young as Dash was when we went to Boston, really wasn’t any harder than traveling alone. Just pack a few extra clothes and diapers, and you’re set. He didn’t require extra food because I was still nursing him, and he didn’t need a lot of toys because he could be entertained with our keys or cell phones. Our friends were accommodating and doting, and we didn’t even have to sacrifice anything on our itinerary because of our baby.
We thought we had it easy. Experienced parents used to tell us to savor these early months because it would only get harder, but we didn’t know what they were talking about. Once he starts crawling, they said, it would be all over.
As I write this, Dash is almost eight months old. That’s twice as old as he was when we went to Boston. He is now crawling, standing, and getting into everything. He eats solid food at least twice a day. He has become clingy and demanding. He remains a Good Baby, but he requires more and more attention every day. It makes me wonder how different this trip to Boston would have been with a baby that did more than just eat and sleep.
Our third day in Boston (back in March…) began with a bus ride from Jamaica Plain to the Hynes Convention Center where PAX East was being held. We never use the buses in Richmond, so it feels kind of glamorous when we ride on public transportation when we travel.
The first thing we did when we arrived was compete in a Magic: The Gathering tournament. John and I were eliminated in the first round. My opponent was a total jerk, and Dash was fussing during most of the game. But Eric won his first round, got a bye for the second round, and made it to the third round. We all got a few booster packs for participating which fueled our new hobby.
After the tournament, we managed to find a seat in the main theater to listen to the Penny-Arcade Q&A Panel. The questions were great, the answers were hilarious, and there was even am arm-wrestling match between Mike and Jerry. It was epic.
The convention was pretty much over by lunch time. We had seen and done everything that we wanted to see and do. On our way out, we checked on Chris to see if he wanted to leave with us. He was still playing in the Settlers of Catan tournament, so we left him to finish and agreed to meet later.
We said goodbye to the very first PAX East and ventured into Boston for sightseeing.
John unlocked his bike, and we found his roommate, Andrea, a few blocks away. Andrea is in graduate school to get a degree in Library Science, and yes, I am jealous. She had just come from an event that was rallying against library closings.
Andrea gave us a quick personal tour of the Boston Public Library. The interior was lined with yellow marble and gilded with golden embellishments and statuary.
After leaving the library, we settled at a group of tables near the bay window at the front of L’Aroma Cafe and called the rest of our group to meet us there. The coffee at L’Aroma was the best I had in Boston, and the chocolate cake was perfect – not too sweet, almost like chocolate bread.
Chris met us there shortly after we got our coffee. He had won the Settlers of Catan tournament and he got a shiny medal on a red ribbon to prove it!
Cat and John’s girlfriend, Lindsey, met us at the cafe, too. This was our first time meeting Lindsey and we most definitely approve. She’s silly and quirky, just like us.
When we left the cafe, we decided to walk to the Boston Common.
John and Lindsey found a good climbing tree in the park.
Everybody jumped on the tree except me. It’s not that I was afraid necessarily, but I blame my trepidation on breaking both of my arms by falling out of trees when I was younger.
I recorded this great video of Cat and Andrea playing hand clapping games in the tree. I’ve been taking more videos than photos lately, especially of Dash. I hope to have time to catch up on blogging and post them soon!
As we left the park, we encountered a fearless squirrel. Cat fed him an almond.
Then, Cat led us on a tour of part of the Freedom Trail. She knew an impressive amount of Boston history, so it felt like we had a personal tour guide.
I really liked the old brick buildings around the Boston Common. They reminded me of the neighborhood in Richmond where I lived with Cat while we were in college.
Just before it got dark, we jumped on a train back to Jamaica Plain. We walked to an Indian restaurant for dinner and shared an assortment of food family-style. Indian food is one of my favorite kinds of food. I love naan and the assorted chutneys that they served.
When we got back to John’s and Andrea’s apartment, Andrea read Dash some children books before bed. This handkerchief is a map of Paris, and it covered the light on the ceiling in Andrea’s bedroom. So cool!
Saturday, March 27 was Day Two of our vacation in Boston as well as Day Two of the very first PAX East. Eric and Chris woke up early to get to the convention center in time for a Settlers of Catan tournament in which Chris wanted to participate. I slept for another hour or two. After I woke up, I had a slow morning with John and his roommate, Andrea. John served coffee, potatoes, eggs, and an avocado for the three of us to eat for breakfast.
Dash fell asleep in Andrea’s arms after breakfast, and we finished our coffee while we waited for our friend Cat to arrive. Cat has been in Boston for the past two years attending graduate school, but she will be moving back to Richmond later this year!
When Cat arrived, I woke Dash from his nap with Andrea, and I bundled him in his brown hoodie with bear ears – all ready for the chilly Boston weather. Then, the four of us – John, Cat, and I, with Dash in his stroller (Andrea stayed home to study) – started walking to the convention center to meet the rest of the guys for lunch.
On our way to the train station, we stopped at John’s plot in a community garden. He and Cat checked on his plants, which were just beginning to sprout…
…while I zoomed around the garden with Dash in his stroller and took photos. Dash was characteristically cheerful.
I think that John may want to consider using pesticide in his garden, though. He seems to have a Godzilla infestation. Heh.
From there, we caught a train on the Orange Line heading downtown and hopped off at the station closest to the convention center. We still had to walk several blocks, though. John took us by the gorgeous and impressive Christian Science Center, which is where he and Cat balanced on a concrete barrier and dared each other to jump across gaps in the wall.
We met Eric and Chris in front of the convention center, then we started looking for a place to eat. We ended up on a charming street in the historic Back Bay neighborhood, and we put our names on a waiting list to eat at the cafe inside Trident Booksellers. We browsed through their books and magazines while we waited, and I bought a Charley Harper’s ABCs board book for Dash. It kept him entertained for about half an hour.
The food was definitely worth the wait. The coffee was bold and rich, the fruit was fresh and crisp, and my lemon ricotta stuffed french toast was exquisite. I have thought about this toast many times since we left Boston, and I am determined to learn how to cook it.
Starting with the photo in the top left in the collage above, that’s me, Chris, and John sitting on one side of the table. Chris, John, and Eric were all in the same grade in high school, and they all went to college together, too. Justin is the fellow in the two photos in the top right. He’s wearing a homemade hat with a patch of Virginia, and the two cities in which he has lived are marked in red. In the bottom right is a photo of Justin and Cat together. They are married, and Cat and I were in the same grade in high school – at the same high school that Chris, John, and Eric attended. We were roommates for one year during college, too. Finally, there’s my lunch in the bottom left, and that’s Eric sitting across from me wearing a Metalocalypse shirt.
After lunch, Justin and Cat left because they didn’t have tickets to PAX East. The rest of us returned to the convention center. As we expected after having missed Wil Wheaton’s keynote speech the day before, there were long lines to get into any of the discussion panels. We had already explored the Expo Hall and played a few games in the Free Play rooms, though… and we wanted to get our money’s worth, so we parked ourselves in one of the queues.
Having all come from different cities – John from Boston, Chris from northern Virginia, and Eric and I from Richmond – waiting in the queue was a great time to catch up.
We just barely made it past the cut-off point in the line to get into the room, and we even had to stand in the back. I don’t remember what discussion topic we waited in line for, and I didn’t get to find out because Dash started fussing before it even began. I sacrificed my place in the room (when I left, somebody who was still waiting in line was allowed to enter), and I took Dash to a quiet corner in another area of the convention center.
I could tell that he was tired. There are a few tell-tale clues that indicate when he needs a nap. He rubs his forehead with the back of his hand, he “cranks” his ear with his fist, and his eyelids get red and droopy. I nursed him for a few minutes, then he fell asleep in my arms. Since I couldn’t get back into the discussion panel (there was still a line of people waiting to get into the room if anybody left), I sorted my Magic cards while Dash slept.
When the discussion panel that Eric, John, and Chris were listening to ended, we moved to another hallway to play Magic. We were sitting next to another group of friends who were doing the same thing, and pretty much anywhere we went in the convention center, there were people playing some kind of game. Nobody was alone, and everybody was having fun.
A crowd had formed at a booth across the hallway from where we were sitting, and Chris said, “Hey, there’s Wil Wheaton.” It’s well known among our group of friends that I am a fan of Wil Wheaton. I read his blog, and I follow his Twitter. But I am deathly terrified of actually meeting him. I’ve heard that he’s perfectly humble and least intimidating, but how lame would it be to get a chance to talk to him and all I can think to say is, “You Are SO COOL, Man.”
So, I admired him from a distance.
But let me tell you about this one time where I almost did meet Wil Wheaton.
It was at a previous PAX in Seattle, back in 2008. I had managed to avoid meeting Wil Wheaton for the entire weekend, despite Eric’s encouragement to just get in the damn line to get his autograph or a photo already. “Oh, the line’s too long,” I would say, or, “Aww shucks, we have to go do this OTHER thing way over THERE right now.” So, the convention had ended, and Eric and I had hung back to let the crowd thin at the exit. We sat by a window for a while, and I watched Eric play a game on the DS. It was nice.
Before we left, Eric stopped by the bathroom. While he was in the bathroom and I was waiting against a wall in the hallway just outside – nobody else in sight – Wil Wheaton walks by and my heart skips a beat.
Oh Shit, That Was Wil Wheaton.
I regained my composure before Eric came out of the bathroom. On our way out of the convention center, we started talking about what we wanted to eat for dinner. Then, all of a sudden, we were on an escalator and who was in front of us but Wil Motherfucking Wheaton.
I elbowed Eric and whispered – probably loud enough that Wil heard me, “Oh My God, That’s WIL WHEATON!!!” I should have kept my mouth shut because Eric’s first inclination is to try pushing me down to escalator to say hi. Thankfully, Wil got on his cell phone at that exact second. “Oh darn, I can’t say Hi now because he’s on the phone!” Hah hah.
What’s worse is that we just happened to be going the same direction as Wil once we exited the convention center. He probably thought that we were following him, and we did consider that he was only pretending to be talking on his cell phone to avoid meeting yet another fan.
This probably ranks in my top five scary moments – the other four being serious life-threatening, mentally-traumatizing affairs including drifting at sea while watching the sailboat get farther and farther away, camping under the stars in a frigid December to watch a meteor shower, inner-tubing on the James River at midnight during a thunderstorm, and getting lost in Japan while drunk.
So anyway, back to Pax East 2010. Just like the night before, we stayed at the convention center as long as we could and played Magic. We even gave Dash some of our token cards and rule cards to play with. He thought that they were yummy.
Eventually, we did have to leave so that we didn’t miss the last train back to John’s apartment. But we hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so we found a dim hole-in-the-wall pizza restaurant and ordered a pizza to go. We were so hungry that we ate half of it in the restaurant before leaving, though. It was the perfect comfort food to conclude another exhausting day of living out a backpack.
Two months ago, we flew to Boston to attend PAX East and to visit our friends who live there. Not only have I neglected to write about this trip for two months, I never even wrote about the PAX that we attended in Seattle two years ago.
PAX is the abbreviation for the Penny Arcade Expo, which is an annual (now biannual) gaming convention hosted by the guys that write the Penny Arcade web comic. The convention is a mix of workshops, discussion panels, and concerts, along with a gigantic expo hall, tabletop gaming tournaments, and free play console gaming and PC gaming rooms. It’s kind of like the largest LAN party ever.
We scheduled a flight leaving Richmond on a Thursday evening. Eric and I left work early so that we could arrive at the airport on time. We checked in, printed our tickets, and made it all the way to our gate – and then we discovered that our flight had been canceled during the few minutes that had passed while we were going through security. After contemplating driving to Boston overnight, we opted to reschedule our flight for the next morning.
This was Dash’s first time on an airplane, as well as his first time out of Virginia. Eric held him in his lap on the plane, and Dash hardly cried at all. In fact, he slept almost the entire time.
John picked us up from the airport in Boston. He had borrowed a car seat from a coworker for Dash. We got a quick tour of Boston as he drove us through the city to his apartment. He lives on the first floor of a cute house in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood.
We dropped off our luggage and met John’s roommate, Andrea, and her previous house guest who was just leaving, a cute girl from Germany who was on her way to Canada. John entertained Dash with the pots and pans (or was Dash entertaining John?) while Eric and I packed a backpack in preparation for spending the rest of the day at the convention center.
The convention center didn’t open until 2:00 pm, so John took us out to lunch at a restaurant that specialized in vegetarian food and local beer. Totally our kind of place.
Of course, Dash went everywhere with us. He is such a good baby. He doesn’t sleep as much as he used to, but we can still take him out without the fear that he will scream the whole time. Just give him a spoon or some keys or some sunglasses, and he will be happy.
After lunch, we made our way to the convention center and found that a line had already formed. It was so long that it wrapped around the building. Attendees began waiting in line hours before the doors were scheduled to open to ensure that they would get a seat in the main theater where Wil Wheaton would be giving the keynote speech. Needless to say, the theater had already reached its capacity by the time that we got inside. I was so bummed.
Since we couldn’t get into the highly anticipated keynote speech, we wandered around the convention center. It was positively packed. The common areas were hallways filled with Sumo bean bags, and those lucky enough to find a place to sit were either digging through their swag bags and flipping through the PAX program, or they were playing some kind of game. We brought our Nintendo DS and played a lot of Desktop Tower Defense. We also got back into Magic The Gathering after getting free starter decks in our swag bags.
We made our way into one of the console free play rooms. The room was filled with rows and rows of flat screen TVs hooked up to Xboxs, Wiis, and Playstations. Here, we could check out (like at a library) almost any game for any modern system. There was a separate room for retro gaming.
John played with Dash while Eric waited in line to check out a game for us to play.
Eric picked the game Heavy Rain after remembering that he had read some positive reviews, including a comment written by one of the Penny Arcade guys. We only played the game for about thirty minutes – most of which was spent trying to figure out the controls – but I wasn’t impressed. It’s a single player game, and the beginning of it (the short part that we played) entails controlling the main character as he showers and prepares for his day.
See?
OMG.
We sure did think it was funny, though.
Here’s what Boston looked like from the convention center just before sunset.
We left the convention center to find some dinner, but first we stopped at a pharmacy to buy some disposable diapers for Dash. We still use cloth diapers most of the time, but we figured that disposable diapers would be easier when traveling – especially since we came on a plane and didn’t bring a lot of luggage.
It was pretty cold in Boston, so we bundled up Dash in one of John’s sweatshirts while we were in the pharmacy. He was so cute, I couldn’t stand it!
We found a Thai restaurant across the street from the convention center for dinner. I forgot to take any pictures of the charming restaurant because Dash started fussing. Eric and I are nervous to be those parents with a crying baby in public, so we tend to get stressed out when this happens – which is still not very often, thankfully.
To get Dash to be quiet, I ended up nursing him at the table using a nursing cover that I bought just before this trip in anticipation of having to feed him in public. I was self-conscious that people would see what I was doing and think that it was either indecent or unsanitary. But nobody seemed to notice, and by the end of our vacation, I was whipping out my boobs (under the nursing cover, of course) to feed Dash anytime and anywhere.
At one point during dinner that first night, I also carried Dash to the bathroom to change his diaper. I could have tried changing his diaper while he was in his stroller, which reclines to a horizontal position, but I thought that the other patrons wouldn’t care to see a naked baby while they ate their dinner, nor would they want to smell baby poop if it was that kind of dirty diaper.
But there wasn’t a changing table in the bathroom, and the floor – my second option – looked nasty. I laid Dash on the counter next to the sink, but it didn’t necessarily look any cleaner. It turns out that I laid Dash in a puddle of water that I didn’t discover until I picked him up. What I learned from this experience and others like it by the end of the weekend was that it’s easier – and most likely, cleaner – to just change Dash’s diaper quickly and discreetly in his stroller.
So, Dash’s short bout of crying in the restaurant wasn’t that bad (it never is), and we made our way back to the convention center after dinner. Dash was being cute again, so I remembered to take more pictures. It’s easy to forget that Dash is capable of being a butt head when he’s being happy and cute.
While a lot of people were queuing (a consistent theme for the convention) for the night’s concerts with MC Frontalot headlining, we chose to wait in a shorter line for the PC free play room. We knew that the concert would probably be too loud for Dash, and we wouldn’t be able to stay until the end of the concert because the last train back to John’s apartment left before the concert was scheduled to end. We watched Eric play Desktop Tower Defense on the DS while we waited.
Here’s a couple pictures of the long lines. The concert line was on the against the wall on the left side of this hallway, and the PC free play line was against the wall on the right. There was a narrow walkway down the middle. Navigating with a stroller was a little difficult, but only because we didn’t want to inconvenience anybody else. We weren’t the only people there with a baby, though… and most people were polite and respectful. In fact, Dash was quite the center of attention. A group of girls actually asked to have their picture taken with Dash while we were waiting in one of the lines.
Well, we did get kicked out of the expo hall because of the stroller. They said that it was a hazard in the case of fire. I didn’t see how our stroller was any more cumbersome than wheelchairs, and they weren’t kicking out the handicaps – and I didn’t see how the expo hall was any different than the rest of the convention center, but the stroller was allowed everywhere else. But we aren’t the type to complain, so we took turns waiting in the hallway with Dash while the other checked out the exhibitors.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long to get into the PC free play room. It was HUGE. John and I played a few rounds of Left 4 Dead. Eric spectated for a few minutes, then he left the room to tend to Dash. His departure ended up being good timing because our friend from northern Virginia had just arrived from the train station. John and I finished our game, then we left to greet Chris.
We found a quiet place in a less traveled hallway, and settled in a group on the floor to dig through our swag bags and read the descriptions on our new Magic cards. Eric played Magic years before I met him, and he got me into it when I was in college… but several years had passed since we last played. We even sold most of Eric’s Magic cards on eBay a few years ago. Well, we convinced John and Chris to buy a few booster packs with us, and we spent most of our free time during PAX playing Magic with each other in the hallways.
We hung out in the convention center as long as we could, but we had to leave in time to catch the last train to Jamaica Plain. On our way out, we peeked our heads into the main theater where the concerts were being held.
I admit that I was anxious to depart from my routine, sleep in a different bed, and travel with a baby. I didn’t know what I would have done if Dash was incurably crying on the plane, or if the convention was not amenable to babies. The unknown is what scared me the most. I could anticipate everything that might go wrong, but I didn’t know how I would respond if something did go wrong. But after a full day away from home, not only had my anxiety disappeared, I was thriving on the excitement of the unknown.
Lauren Newman lives in Richmond, Virginia. She majored in urban planning, married her high school sweetheart, and dreams about moving to Mexico. More »
