Adventures of a Discoverer

All the way back in the heady days of 1998, two artists (Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik) decided to create a comic strip in the new medium known as the "Internet" and named it "Penny Arcade" . It was a webcomic about video games and video game culture and it became quite successful. So much so that the two authors decided that, in addition to the webcomic, they also wanted to create a convention solely dedicated to video games and video game culture and so in 2004 they hosted in Bellevue (a suburb of Seattle) the first "Penny Arcade Expo" or PAX . That event grew and grew and grew and now it is massive. So much so that it spawned other PAXes that happen at different times of the year in different cities and even abroad. To distinguish from their successors, the original one was renamed "PAX West" and this year it happened on Labor Day weekend, from August 30th to September 2nd. And, after hearing about it for a long time, I finally attended the

Lake Sutherland is a wonderful little lake hidden in the middle of the Olympic Peninsula. Not many people know about it, and not only it is a beautiful place surrounded by trees, but also it has a very convenient public boat launch. And it was there that I put my kayak on the water two weeks ago, to spend some very pleasant couple of hours paddling through the calm waters. At the beginning, there was a thin drizzle, but it didn't bother at all and on the other hand it made so that I had an entire lake just for myself. In fact, it was pretty to see the rain drops falling on the surface of the water, and fortunately there was no wind whatsoever. The waters were very transparent, and I could see many fishes and aquatic vegetation, and also some very shallow parts of the lake (there were a number of buoys warning the boats to not come close, but my kayak is perfect for shallow waters). Everything was so calm that I could see deer roaming the empty lake houses at the margins. It was a