A Pittsburgh

I am back in town now after about a week traveling to Wisconsin, again. Several months ago I submitted an abstract to a Midwestern ITE Regional conference because it was in the Dells, and I figured, what the heck, if I get in I can do some visits at the same time. I decided to drive out there since I had the time, I’m getting quite sick of flying, and with even a half full van, the environmental impacts are probably less than the flight.
I first offered the trip up on CS, and then later on Craigslist. I love logistics and planning these things, but it was still a trying experience with all the last-minute cancelations, and other nonsense. We had a couple cancel because dude’s sister decided to get married, another girl who was bringing a friend canceled because she got free tickets to Bonnaroo, another canceled the day before b/c despite the fact that we had met and discussed this, she somehow did not realize that we were taking two days. then on the day of the trip, one girl calls me to tell me that she only has half of the money, but had the rest at her apartment in Chicago. I asked her what she was going to do about food for two days and she said she had three dollars in change and could live off of crackers because she was “used to being broke.” To me this means, I’m good at stealing and getting suckers to buy me shit. This was sounding really sketchy, I was in a hurry to get out, and I didn’t really want to be the guy who brought some spanger trash into our host’s house, especially since I had just met that guy too. I told her to she would need to find another ride, despite her whining and assertions to her non-sketchiness. I loaded up the other dudes, at least one of whom I might add looked a bit more sketchy and broke than she was, with his torn up jeans, but everyone else had the dough, so we were off. I had to remind myself the kind of shitty shit I wore when I was in college, and everyone turned out to be really cool anyway.
We got to Pittsburgh in very reasonable time, and after some nice stretches of rural roads. Pittsburgh itself is a very cool looking city in my opinion. It is a large Rustbelt city built over numerous hills and in the valleys of two converging rivers. There are steep streets and bridges everywhere. I love seeing stately hills that are part of the city visible all around. Little clusters of homes and building fill up every conceivable niche in the hills. I saw two four story apartment houses next to each other that were bounded by the freeway on one side and a rock wall on the other three sides that appeared to have been cut out for the sake of these buildings and could almost be reached from the upper windows. It is very typical PA city housing which means lots of brick row houses and very tight streets. I think from an aesthetic and location viewpoint I could definitely live in Pitt.
When we got there, we all relaxed around the Pittsburgh ride share's house for awhile before walking the dog and going in search of food. On this little food search I found that I was among kindred spirits as Jordan exclaimed with pleasure that there was a Royal Crown Cola vending machine, and Mike was as impressed and pleased as both of us. I'm simply not used to meeting people who even know what RC is, much less share the love I do. The machine however did not reciprocate our love and chose not to vend a damn thing and I never actually did get a taste of the best soda of low enough quality to be served in a can. I have certainly become a soda snob, which I can add on to my beer, food, chocolate and coffee snobbery. I really believe that life is too short to settle for crap, especially when it comes to edibles.
Now I have seen cool dogs, but this little bitch is amazing. She is a border collie with unbelievable energy and affinity for catching shit in the air. So ok, she can catch a tennis ball with unbelievable accuracy at about 5 feet, yay. But the amazing thing about this dog is that she can climb trees. And I do mean climb trees. All Sam had to do to get her excited was to yell, "Millie, there's a squirrel, there's a squirrel!" and point up in the tree. She would bolt to the tree and shoot up to the branches, which were about at the height where I could reach with my hands, and then back flip off and land on her feet, albeit rather ungracefully with a face plant. She did this repeatedly, and supposedly she can actually get into the branches when there is a squirrel up there. After grabbing some Thai food to go, we headed over to meet our host for the night, Amanda have a beer and eat our food. Speaking of beer, don't mind if I do.
Amanda and her friend, who is a personal chef for some rich people, were friendly and immediately very talkative. The first thing I saw when I went in was several bikes and bike parts everywhere, making me an instant fan. Most of the bike stuff belongs to her roommate who was unfortunately not present, but she uses her bicycle for work every day, so she gets the seal of approval. The beer was good, the Thai was marginal, and then we were off to the karaoke bar where we were to meet up with Sam again and several local CSers. A complication arose at the door when one of my riders, Jordan, became exasperated when he realized that you had to be 21 to enter. Apparently in Rhode Island where he schools you only have to be 18 to enter, 21 to drink. He assured us that he would be fine in the van since he had plenty of homework to do. The other non-local Craigslist rider also decided to hang in the van since he didn't want to spend any money. I didn't want to leave them sitting on their asses in the van, but we were meeting CSers, so the remainder entered. Sam was there, and soon several more CSers showed up and we had a group. I was quite impressed with the CS Pitt response I got since it was so last minute. Everyone was pretty cool, but for some reason we kind of all just hung around and the conversation was a bit forced. I think it had something to do with the physical configuration of the group, but I wasn't too happy about it. One of the CSers informed us that there was a bar across the street that didn't card, so after a few songs were sung and beers drunk, I got everyone going with the hope that the change of venue would improve the dynamic, and we headed to the other place with the van folks amongst us. Sure enough, it did and conversation began to flow more freely, despite the presence of some shyness in the group. However, by that time everyone was a bit tired. I think the van guys would have been happy not going out and just did because we went through the effort of moving. In the end though they got the benefit of conversing with some white haired vet with typical shorts, long white socks and unbent armed forces baseball cap. I did not get to enjoy his company, but he was vehement about his Irish heritage and his status as a Vietnam vet. Since sleepiness was setting in and an early morning was imminent, we departed rather quickly. I drove Sam and those who would sleep at his place up the hill to his house because it was pouring and then crashed like a baby on the blow up mattress in Mr. Handiman Bike Dude's room.