Pittsburgh - There and Back Again

I will try to make this as short as possible, however, I had a jam packed 3 day stay in Pittsburgh. The fun started on Wednesday when I left my home for Pittsburgh at approximately 10 PM. I reached my mom's house at roughly 8:45 AM. The drive was relatively uneventful. Which, when it comes to interstate driving is just about as much as you can ask for. The only complaint that I can make has nothing to do with the drive. My debit card decided to flake out on me. I don't use it very often, and when I do, it is typically in a POS (Point of Sale) machine. Unfortunately, I didn't know that it was not working in ATMs and when I was approaching WV where there are tolls on 77. I was concerned that I would not have enough cash on hand to pay them all since I couldn't remember the total. As fate would have it, it was about this time that I became convinced that my card was useless in an ATM. I tried a DIP reader, Swipe reader and neither one wanted to cooperate. The only thing I didn't try was a mechanical reader and that was only because I didn't find one. Finally, I found a Walmart in Wythville, VA. I made a $0.93 cent purchase to acquire cash for tolls.

As you can imagine, my Thursday was spent primarily sleeping. I crashed out from between 9:30 and 5:15. Once my mom got home, we left for Dana's apt. I got to spend some time with the boys, my dad, my mom, my nephews, and my brother-in-law. After chilling for a short while, dinner was on. After dinner it was a return trip to Dana's apt and spent some more time with my dad. Once my mom got tired enough, she had me take her back home. At this point it was after 10 PM. Therefore, I tossed on the Olympic games and caught Phelps' 7th gold medal win. Following Phelps' performance, I decided that it was time to do something else. Off to the Beehive I was with Tom. We dropped over $10 in quarters in the pinball machines and closed the place. We then played some ping-pong at Dee's and closed them down. From Dee's, we drove up to the West End Overlook and I ran my stereo through its paces for Tom. Well, once it got after 3:30, we called it a night.

Once back to my mom's house, I asked Dana to have me awake around 9:30 so we could go to the mall. Ironically, that didn't happen and it wasn't my fault. She decided to go to sleep after work and Dad had issues waking her up. I woke up on my own at 10:45 and by the time I was done shaving, Dana was present. I finished up my SSS routine and we headed to Dicks. I'm not going to recap the skate purchase debacle since I covered that in a prior post. However, once I was done getting my skates purchased, we headed to Scalley's to use the driving range and Par 3 course. Tom and Erin met us there. Dana's performance on the driving range was less than promising. However, once we got on to the Par 3 course, she kicked some ass. She actually shot better than I did after the 9 hole course. She'd never played anything harder than the Pitch 'N Putt before and she beat me. Well, never-the-less, I didn't care. I just needed the practice before hitting the links at Village Green on Saturday.

To round out the excitement for Friday, the night was planned to have a Munchkin free-for-all. We had a table of 5 to play, what we expected to be several games. To our surprise, a single hand of Cthulu Muchkin took us 3 hours to play. So much for an approximate 60-90 minute game play. I am starting to notice that the number of players is a more telling metric than the number of decks being played. The last time we played as a group in Pittsburgh, the game lasted forever and we were playing Bites and Star. This time we thought that a stand-alone deck would speed things along. Furthermore, I thought that with the alternate "Cult" rules that the game would more along faster. Well, we were surprised once again. After the game was over, Exile & Darkace headed home and the rest of us hung out for a few more hours before calling it a night.

Saturday started much too early. I headed out of Josh & Lisa's house by 7:40 to get the festivities started. I picked up Justin, he wasn't ready (not a big surprise, really), and then picked up Tom. I was surprised at how much trouble I had getting 3 sets of clubs in my trunk again. I figured that I already had done it before, doing it again wouldn't have been a huge deal. Man was I wrong. I don't know how much time I killed trying to get the trunk packed. Even then, we had to take some clubs out of Tom's bag because they were too long. Well, once we got the clubs in the trunk, we headed to Burgettstown. We got to Mike's place at about 9 AM and our tee time was at 9:30. I guess we took our buffer a little too much for granted. When we were supposed to be on the tees we got to the clubhouse.

Immediately following my entry into the clubhouse, a problem develops. My debit card for my primary checking account is MIA (yes, the same one that wasn't working in ATMs). Well, to make this part of the story short, at Scalley's, I put the contents of one of my pockets into my golf bag. Included in this pocket was my debit card. I didn't find my card until I dropped Tom at home much later. I was surprisingly calm about the situation. The way I looked at it, if I had lost it, the person that was going to try to use it was in for a challenge. Anyway, if it were lost, I could call it in before too much time elapsed. But that wasn't required since I did relocate it a bit later in the day.

Don't worry, I'm going to going to detail the outing hole by hole. I will say that my drives were on for as much as I can be on. On average, I would say that I was driving 230. I think my best drive peaked out at 270ish. Now, if I could get my drive to skip the slice, I think a straight flight could get me around the 300 mark. Unfortunately, I don't play enough and doubt I'll ever get that good. Conversely, my putting sucked as usual. It was very few and far between that I got away with less than 3 putts. For some reason, I just can't read the greens. Either I can't get the angle right or I hit the ball with the wrong power. I will say that for me I had a generally good day. I finished out the day with a 112 with only one hole at a 10 stroke. That hole was a really bad one where I just could not get my PW to get the ball on to the green. I was either short or I would fly the green. I guess I need to spend some more time working on my short game. Tom won the day with a 105 and Mike finished slightly ahead of me. I can't remember his score. However, Justin finished with a miserable 140.

Once I got Tom & Justin home, it was time to find out what I would be doing for my Saturday night, of which needed to be an early night. I ended up meeting up with Tyler and Randy for some bowling at Nobel Manor. Between Tyler and I, we put down 7 games. We both were using house equipment. Although, technically I had the advantage (Ty is still going thru physical therapy from his wrist surgery) I was still having a hard time beating him. My best score of the night was a 200 even. Randy met up with us later and put in 2 games with us. It was a good time. It was great to see them both again. For that matter, it was great seeing everyone while I was home. Well, after I completely obliterated any usefulness of my right hand we called it a night.

Using house equipment after throwing a fingertip hook for so long was an experience. I left there unable to put my right hand ring on. As of this writing, I am still unable to put it on. The hole span was too short and the finger holes were too large thus putting major pressure on the top middle knuckles of my middle two fingers. Also, using plastic balls on oily lanes required massive RPMs at a slow speed. After putting down 7 games, every muscle in my right forearm was screaming for mercy. Therefore, as I eluded to in the hockey post, my right arm and possibly some of my back pain was from bowling. The rest of my discomfort was from playing 27 holes of golf in 2 days. I already know that golf does a number on my back. Needless to say, the past couple of days since Saturday has been interesting with the amount of pain I've been in. Oh well, I had fun and life goes on.

Sunday started bright and early at 0630. Amazingly, my mom had no issues waking me up. By the time I got myself together and my car packed up, at 0700 I was on route to breakfast. There, I met up with Dana, Derrick, DJ, Camren, & my mom. We had a good breakfast and to my surprise, my mom didn't get all emotional when it came to me actually leaving. By the time everything was all said and done, I was on the road finally at 0900.

The drive home requires some discussion. Yes, I made it home safely and without incident. However, the drive home was drastically different from the drive north. With the higher ambient temperature and having my roof down meant more heat in my trunk. Therefore, before I could log 200 miles, one of my amps went into temperature protect mode and shut itself down. Well, my initial intention was to give the amp plenty of time to cool down before I fired it back up again. However, after an hour or more, I decided that I was enjoying the time in my head. Therefore, from early within the WV segment of my drive until I arrived at the rink for my hockey game, my radio was off and this left me to my own devices.

I'm not going to get into detail on the things that I spent thinking about during the drive here. I am going to put together a series of posts with the underlying concept of driving rants. I'm not sure how well I'll get to keeping the series out on a periodic basis, but they will all come out sooner or later.

Short of spending the trip in my head, the only things to note would be the traffic that I encountered in SC. As soon as I was thru the border into SC the entire highway came to a stand-still. It took us about 20 minutes to go 2 miles. That was about all I could take. I took exit 100 and found a way around the traffic. The traffic was being caused by an accident that happened at mile marker 93. Between the time I spent in traffic and the time spent in the detour, I had exhausted all of the buffer time I had allotted myself to get home in time for my hockey game. I literally made it to the rink with 20 minutes to get into uniform and suited up in my gear. It was just long enough. I was able to get all of that accomplished and left me with about 5 or so minutes to skate around for the first time on my new wheels.

Between the drive, traffic, and hockey, I ultimately got home at just after 10 PM. What a long day that turned out to be. I'm glad that I was able to do this trip solo before having to do it in tandem. I was able to find out why my baseline is for the trip during the day since I am typically a night driver and if I were to have run later, would have been able to push harder to get home faster without any "feedback" from a passenger. So, in the next 2 months when I am doing this same trip again, I know with relative certainty what I will have to do to get home for my other games.

All-in-all, it was a good trip. I had tons of fun and had a blast hanging out with everyone while I was home. It is weekends like this that really makes me think about what I'm missing since I've moved. It is a shame that I am so introverted. I should be able to create a network that is more local that would allow me to have similar weekends in a more local proximity. I guess time will eventually correct this. However, that would require that I get out of the house more often. I'm really hoping that sports will grant me this opportunity.