PAX South

I've been going to PAX every year since 2009. That's about five years of PAX, with me at every one except for the recent one in Australia. Probably won't be attending that one, I'm afraid.

Anyway, for all ten PAXes I've attended I've had to fly or drive across the country one way or the other. Finally, though, they've announced PAX South, a much closer event: in San Antonio, in fact.

And I've got mixed feelings about it.

Here are the details: PAX South will be taking place in San Antonio, TX, January 23-25, 2015.

San Antonio is ~900 miles from Tucson, about half the distance from Tucson to Seattle and a third the distance from Tucson to Boston. That's kind of awesome. Finally, a place we can drive to pretty easily--I can get from here to San Antonio in a day. I know, I've done it.

Also, it's only about 500 miles from Houma, LA, the city I grew up near. In theory, friends of mine could drive there to see me and finally check out PAX. That would be pretty awesome.

There are a few problems, though. First is the more general problem of having three PAXes to plan for. If we attend PAXes Prime, East, and South, we will never not be getting ready for the next PAX. Fangamer will be in a permanent PAX cycle, and that sounds exhausting.

If we were to drop a PAX, it would probably be PAX East. However, I have friends I would miss if I didn't go to PAX East, and that would be tough. The PAX Pokemon League at East is way funner than the one at Prime, and I'd really hate to miss out on that.

Also, PAX South takes place right after Christmas, meaning that we'll be coming home from Christmas break and immediately diving into PAX preparations. In short, there will be a near-constant stream of being too busy for anything else from PAX Prime, through the Christmas rush, and into the new year. Again, exhausting, and difficult to time--our stock will be low due to Christmas, so we'll only have those few precious weeks to restock things in time to leave for PAX South.

Finally, there's MAGfest, a convention I've grown to love which usually would happen just a few weeks before PAX South but, through some cruel twist of fate, actually happens on the same weekend next year. How frustrating is that?

We'll have a lot to discuss at Fangamer about how we'll be handling all of this new information.