Editing The Pen Addict 653/transcript (section)

== First Impressions of the Pen Show ==

* And so Friday, I went into the show itself, never having been, didn't even know where the show was in the hotel, but I figured it out pretty quickly. And I was like, where is it at? How big is this hotel? Well, it's not that big, but the entrance to, like, their conference area, where, like, the ballrooms would be, is, like, tucked around, like, a side hallway that you would not really go past. Like, it's beyond the escalators and beyond the Starbucks. And, like, you walk to the end of this hall and you see a Hertz rental counter. It's like, oh, it's not past that. And then it turns out, like, it opens up, like, a whole new part of the hotel past that point. So, yeah. But I had to ask. I was like, oh, yeah, just go around the corner. Then it's like, ah. Oh, that's funny. Everything opens up. That's funny. It's hilarious. Nice.
* Good line on Friday morning. So, Friday morning, the early access time was 9 a.m. Friday. There was probably, I don't know, well over 100 people in line.
* You know, but that's, honestly, a pretty short line. That just moves in pretty quick. Did you have to wait in line? I did. I did. And people were making fun of me. It was like, go ahead, Brad. Just walk in. I was like, no. You know you're not allowed now because you know I'm going to ask. I know. You can't big time anyone anymore because I'm, like, on big time patrol. That's right. That's right. I paid. I paid for my ticket. I scanned in. I got my ticket badge just like everybody else. Got my little wristband. So, yes. I did not big time anybody. Good boy. Yeah. I avoid that by just buying tickets early. Like, I bought my tickets, like, two months ago. I was like, this is just how it's going to be. Except the one time I did forget to buy a ticket in San Francisco and they did let me in. They let me in and I was pretty embarrassed that I had to say, I forgot to buy tickets. That's pretty incredible. Yeah. I forgot about that. That's very funny to me.
* So, now that's one of the things. Like, when I book my flight and hotel, I will buy the show tickets. If I don't do that, I will forget. And then I think I've bought them, right? So, that has totally happened to me before. So, this show, probably a lot of people that can picture it in their head, the setup. One giant rectangular ballroom. And then two of the hallways around the ballroom. So, like, a short side and a long side, like an L shape. So, that's the entirety of the show floor. If you've been to, you know, a conference in a hotel or been to another pen show, it's very well contained in this one area. And it was full. Like, all the tables were sold out. And everything was good. So, you had the long exterior hallway, which a lot of traffic flowed through. And then into, like, the side doors of the main ballroom room. It was packed. Friday, obviously, wasn't as packed as it was Saturday. It was warm, which, you know, one of our tips we always talk about when you go into a pen show is to plan on it being hot in the room. It just is. It's, they can't manage any of that very well with the heat and cooling in a hotel with the mass amount of people coming in. So, it was pretty stuffy in the big room. These trade shows, they push more people through than if you were having a wedding or, like, a meeting, you know, like a presentation kind of thing. Because it's just, like, that's just, like, static people for a period of time. But it's just, like, shifting people through and through and through the whole day. And that's just going to heat the room up. There's kind of no way around it. So, you know, you would just, I would take breaks, go outside. Like, as soon as you got outside the room, it's, like, you know, 10 degrees cooler. And it's, like, you know, airflow. And, you know, California, beautiful California, you know, in February weather. It's just gorgeous. The hotel area looks really nice. It was super nice. Like, the whole, everything about the setup was nice. And, like, they, you know, they had a nice outside area with fire pits and, like, huge, huge sitting areas outside. And, like, it was just really, really nice. So, I've gotten into the mode of Friday being, like, my shopping day. Now that I'm doing, like, essentially I'm giving myself a two-day show, right? Fly in Thursday night, leave Sunday morning. So, I have all day Friday, all day Saturday. Friday, I knock out what I want to do. If I have a list, I do that. If there's things I want to see, I do that. That frees up the rest of my weekend. And it's just kind of default happened that way. Because I have literally all day Friday from, like, 9 to 5 to see everything. And that's a lot of time. Outside of, like, San Francisco or D.C., like any other show, I've been, like, completely done on Friday with things I needed to do. The bigger shows, I don't get to everything on a Friday. It's just kind of not possible with the crowd. So, we'll cover the hall later. But, yeah, I did all my shopping pretty much on Friday. Take a couple trips up to the room. That's why I like to stay in the show hotel. You know, I can go hand off things into my room and free up my hands. So, the layout had a good amount of space between the tables. And even, like, on Saturday, you know, it filled up. Like, a lot of shows have tighter walkways. Walkways, I thought this was laid out well.