After two-and-a-half hours of sleep, I got ready for a 7:15 Boston to LA flight on Virgin America that had my name on it. Though getting from Boston’s airport security to our site E3 hotel wasn’t necessarily so painful (it was really just a matter of having the right piece of paper at the right time, and my nervousness left me overprepared), it was the first time I’ve been on a flight by myself, the first time I’ve left the Eastern Time zone, the first time I’ve needed to get across a city via public transport, the first time I’ve checked into a hotel on my own, and the first time I’ve been over 100 miles from home without immediate family support. Luckily, everything went extremely smooth, and by noon Pacific Time, I was in my room with no immediate journalistic duties and an entire day open to me.

As such, there was some extremely important business I needed to take care of.

Though E3 obviously takes precedence in any hypothetical bucket list of mine,  playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf and getting In-N-Out burgers weren’t far down that list. New Leaf is the new sequel to one of my favorite franchises ever, and I needed a physical copy of it; In-N-Out is a near-legendary fast-food chain that I have always wanted to eaten but couldn’t because of it being an extremely regional franchise. 

So instead of sleeping or hanging out with the people I was going to be spending the next week with, I took a literal sprint to the nearby Target to get one of the final remaining copies and took what turned out to be a $60 cab (I really should not have taken a cab) to finish my quest for In-N-Out by ordering fifteen dollars of fast food, and finally go back to the hotel. At least the cab driver made the most of the trip and ordered himself a plain hamburger and salt-free French fries when we went through drive-through, so I’m happy someone benefited from my ordeal other than me. That said, the Double-Double Animal burgers, two orders of french fries, and vanilla shake were delicious enough to justify the trip (and New Leaf is pretty wonderful too, as you can see in my personal screenshot above).

The rest of the day was great but not nearly as eventful. I did meet Justin, Andrew, and Kim for the first time, which was pleasant (I knew Jonny, Gui, Neal, and Jared before that, and TYP/Aaron I met over the following two days), and we also went to the always-amicable Chipotle that night. It ultimately concluded with bouts of hanging out, New Leaf (so much New Leaf), and a late night meeting going over the week’s events by the conductor (and in my case, roommate) himself, Neal, who had only arrived to the hotel moments before.