We start the trip off by picking up Cork and Kristin in Morgantown. Instead of leaving late for a 7:05 PM game, we wanted to make a day out of it. We get them at 11:30 and then head off to Bob Evans to get our grub on. We had to wait a few minutes, so in that time, we sat down in kiddie chairs and played Checkers on a preschool type table. Spank doesn't mess around as he takes us both out in quick fashion. I'm a fan of Checkers, but I never was that great at it, but it's one of those games that are still fun even if you lose. On the food, what'd I order? This is always a theme on road trips is to see what I can munch on. Raspberry crepes, biscuits and gravy, and sweet tea. The exact same order I got at Bob Evans a few weeks back and it's money. You think I'd steer you wrong on food? I may be a little dude, but I do know my food. A lot more food to come..
Outside of a few minor instances, the drive up was pretty smooth and I didn't present any problems. The thing that bugs me in Pennsylvania is the speed limit. In West Virginia, we're used to a speed limit of 70 miles an hour on the interstate. Not up here. Some areas have it at 65, but we were in a lot of 55 zones too, not good. I'm used to being in cruise control the entire time, but I felt like a turtle going in that range. Not that we were in a hurry, but still, I'm used to my comfort zone. I never was a speed demon on the interstate (usually am more so on back roads), but I usually like to set it at 5 miles past the speed limit and just go from there. It was Motorcycle Appreciation Weekend or something of that nature in PA and there were signs everywhere. We saw our first sign and then not long after that, I whip into the other lane and get right up on a bike. I didn't think anything of it, and it wasn't too close, but apparently the rest of the car thought I was going to pancake this bike and go right over him. Again, my driving puts fear into some people, it makes for an interesting day.
We get into the heart of Pittsburgh around 1:30-2:00 or so, a city I've always been a big fan of. I thought we'd have a bunch of time to kill and we'd be wondering what to do for a while, but that was settled about one block from where we parked at for the day. We're walking around and lo and behold, we see a good 50 or more kids on BMX bikes going around this plaza, jumping off steps, doing rail rides, and having all around action. Coming from the middle of nowhere, this would never happen in my town unfortunately, but more on that in a few. We were a block or so away from PNC Park and traffic was going by and this group of kids would be all over the place. The tricks these guys were doing were blowing us all away, so we hung out and checked it out for a lot of the afternoon. That gave me a good reason to bust out the camera, which I'd get big use of on the day. I began to take some pics of the crew as well as some video. I hope to get some videos going in YouTube in the next week or so if I can figure out how to add music and crop some vids, shouldn't be too hard.
Back to comparing my town to Pittsburgh. You can imagine that comparison already. My town has a group of skaters and bikers, but they get a bad rap from 90% of town unfortunately. Now don't get me wrong, these kids aren't angels, but just because they portray a certain image on the outside doesn't mean you can't give them a chance. They get ran out of everywhere in town and there's nowhere for them to skate at. These kids aren't ballers, aren't interested in clubs, church, or any of that. Nothing wrong with that, their outlet is skating. Then the town kicks them out of every place they go and people wonder why some of these kids end up all drugged out or getting into crime. Let the kids be and do their thing and you just might be surprised how harmful they really are, but that wouldn't fly in my area since it's stuck in the 1950s. Pittsburgh though, with a group that huge, there was no supervision and they were doing this in Downtown Pittsburgh. The kids were very respectful with each other, taking turns on the jumps, and looking out for one another. If someone would hit a big move, the kids would hype it up with some claps. If someone mangled themselves on a wreck, and that happened while we were there, the kids would run over and make sure things were ok. The kids weren't out there slanging dope or tearing things up, but just because (in my bum town anyways) they don't look the part of most of everyone else in town, they are thought of as worthless. I could get on a big tangent about this topic as it gets me heated, but I'll save it for the time being and move along with the trip.
From 3:00-4:00, outside the stadium, you could meet most of the Pirates players. There were booths set up all down the street. The deal was that if you had your own camera, you could get pics with the players. This was great for the little kids and they ate it up, but we figured we might as well try it as well. You couldn't get autographs as that'd make the lines last even longer, but the pic idea sounded worth a try since I've never really done it before. I'm not much of an autograph guy anyways. I'd rather get a handshake and talk to them. I didn't want to waste the entire afternoon waiting in these lines, so I jumped in to see my so called look-alike Xavier Nady. He was in a booth with Tyler Yates and Heberto Andrade and we didn't have to wait long as we were one of the first people in line. We step up and Kristin handles the camera while Spank, Cork, and myself jump in there. Spank was cracking us and the Bucs players up by joking with them and asking if they had any chew just to see what they'd say. Nady busted out and since he couldn't say straight out, he said to just search around, someone nearby should have some. Then Cork told Nady on the look-a-like thing with me and Nady got a kick out of that. The nose and dark hair do it I guess.
Once we got our pic with the players, it was off to hang out at a restaurant/bar across the street. We were outside just watching the action go down and ordered a basket of fries, no biggie. At this place, the waitresses wore little shorts and cut off tanktops. A few of the girls had bodies for that, but they put this way out of shape chick into this outfit and it was rough times to be had for everyone. All the people in our area out there eating were noticing it and were put off by it. Don't get me wrong, I like some thickness, but you gotta be smart enough when to hide that mess. Not to mention she had a tramp stamp on her lower back that looked hideous, a thumbs down on my end. You all know how I feel about most tats on girls, they look awful. Just my opinion though. If I offend someone, so be it. But the action was about to start up again as we saw a zillion BMX kids come by, flying through the downtown streets. This time, they went to a different section of town, so what do we do? We followed them of course, what else?
On the river, there was a wedding finishing up. Above the steps, we had the gang of kid bikers doing their thing. Spank had the bright idea of sitting on the steps and having one of the guys jump over him. We got video of it and it turned out to be great. Hopefully I can work that onto YouTube whenever I play around with it enough and add some music. I have a few other vids from the day too, so be on the lookout. A few of their dudes had nice camcorders and were filming the action. It was getting near time to head to the stadium, so I see this group of high school football guys coming down to watch the bikers. Not only may I be hooked on getting vids from this trip, but it was a blast to get pics with random bums for no reason other than to see reactions. That shows how much we had going on. Before the football team, I got some of the bike kids together and got a pic with that bunch, a success. Then I go to the football team and tell them I need a pic and they of course are pumped to do so. They and the bikers had to be wondering what us guys pushing 30 years old were doing by not trying to run them off like the rest of the town. Cork told the team and me to flex to be silly, so that's what we did, good stuff indeed. Those kids ate it up. Chrissy from the mean streets of Webster County saw the pics and said all of those guys were bigger than me. I guess it doesn't take much.
The main part of the trip was to hit up the baseball game. It was icing on the cake after how much fun the day had been so far. We sat in my favorite seats in the stadium, the left field bleacher seats, homer seats if you will. We got into the stadium at 4:30 for a 7:05 game, go figure. I love being early to a game to see some batting practice and all of that. Also, it was FlexFit hat night, a nice freebie there. The Bucs lead the league in promotions and still can't get people into the place. Saturday night had a paid attendance of 28,000+, which is enormous for their games. Usually it's you and a few other people there and that's about it. Combine the hat with the Braves in town and you get the crowd. My area always has had a ton of Braves fans. I figure it has to be because when we grew up, most all of the Braves games were on TBS. Of all the pics I took for the weekend, I only took two inside the stadium, imagine that. There was this chick and her daughter behind us who wouldn't shut up. They were just rambling on about who knows what and I had to listen to that mess. I thought I could talk a lot, but this was just her voice mixed in with talking about pointless things, I was ready to explode. Also one of the quickest games I've ever been to, it lasted about 2 hours and 10 minutes, nuts. There's also something about the text message thing they do where you can send in a text at the stadium and it comes on the screens for everyone to see. I was watching that as much as the game, plus we got a few in there just to be stupid. You see some weird stuff up there.
As with every road trip, I have to rate the town's chicks. Me and Spank both put a huge thumbs down to this. You'd think with a decent sized city you'd have them running all over the place, but we saw very few that made us give a second look to. Maybe since it was cooler that night (40s actually, nice), they didn't come out of the house to bounce around half naked. I know I'm picky and all, but this was rough for just about anyone I'd say. It was that bad. Maybe we'll have better luck next time around in that department.
Food inside the stadium and I picked a good one. I didn't go crazy and eat all game because I knew that Waffle House was calling our names later. They had this gourmet cook chick and she was whipping up some steak, onions, peppers, and cheese for a huge Philly cheesesteak. It was so big that I had to help them hold the sandwich together so they could stuff more on it. Top that with some coleslaw on the side and a bag of chips for $10.50. That's not too bad considering normal stadium prices. Way better than the $5 hot dogs I'd get.
Toot the horns for it's Waffle House time! Our last fun stop of the trip and it's always a good time. To start out, you want to know what I ate. I loaded up on a ham and cheese omelette, hash browns covered with cheese, bacon, and sweet tea. Quite possibly the best bacon I've ever had in my life, no joke. Plus, it was a dirty Waffle House. The table we sat down at wasn't even clean, it was crazy sticky, so I knew we picked a good spot. Cork wiped his section of the table up, but I told him if it's that filthy, just go with it for the experience. Cork is a big jukebox fan, one of few I can name off the top of my head. Surprisingly, they had fairly current songs loaded up on this thing. He goes to play a song for each of us, so we had to laugh at that. Then after that section, he goes to play Souljah Boy's Superman 6 times in a row. Like we hadn't heard it a zillion times already a year ago, but he wanted to leave that thing going when we left for the people to have stuck in their heads. Unfortunately, this jukebox was smart and wouldn't let you run repeats all night long. They played it once and then took his money, he was fired up.
Me and Spank (go grammar) were definitely getting the regular standing in front of the restaurant pic. That was a given and nothing creative about it. Then a light popped into my head (Bobby Light) and I had one last idea. I wanted a pic with the dirties that were the waitresses that night. Just pure random, why not huh? So when we're paying, I have to bust out the charm and then ask (let me ax somebody) these chicks if they'd be kind enough to get a pic with me. It must've been the accent or just maybe I was that smooth, who knows. As I'm setting up the pic, there's this chick probably about 45 years old who I was calling a big meth head who was eating. She was a wreck, crazy makeup, falling out of her top, the whole deal. She was all hyped that I thought of this idea. The characters you see at a Waffle House, let me tell ya.
That about wraps up the big portion of this blog. I could talk about other things that happen in my area through the week, but that never changes. You all know my schedule by now and will get that in the next blog. Spank was saying on the way home, "Man.. we live in a hole in the wall!" He's probably definitely right about that considering the options out there in a real actual city. Our town is a complete joke, but it's what we know. I'm still a small town guy, but always good to get out of the house every now and then and see what your non-average bums get into.
Bird's Dirty Thug Ho of the Week: http://www.myspace.com/nataliasingermav
Bird's Video Moment of the Week: We get another sent in from a reader, The_Freak. This features Benny the Bull on Jerry Springer. Enough said, you know you'll like it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2PE9gQwlQ0E
3 Quick Thangs:
1. Last week on Idol, Jason Castro got the boot. He flamed and had two horrible performances. This led to a chat with The_Freak:
The_Freak (9:58:29 PM): I would bang Syesha without remorse.
The_Freak (9:58:43 PM): You stink pot boy. Go get some more Doritos.
Me (9:58:55 PM): He's a bum, but he cracks me up.
The_Freak (9:59:05 PM): He needs a show on MTV
The_Freak (9:59:10 PM): Potheads are funny
The_Freak (9:59:30 PM): I'm sure he's a laid back dude and all
The_Freak (9:59:32 PM): But damn
The_Freak (9:59:36 PM): Get your shit together bro
2. Mom doesn't know too much about computers. One day last week I was bored and checking out bums (I know I use that term a lot, but that's how it goes) on MySpace just for something to do. She saw me looking at someone and then starts asking gossip. Then she started naming people and I told them I'd find them in no time and how everyone and their brother posts their life on there. She quickly found out how ate up people can get up on there, and if she really wanted to look through it all the time, she'd be ate up like the Waffle House meth chick knowing that she can search the town's day-to-day activity and who is sleeping with who. That should be a TV show all in and of itself.
3. What's that I smell?? Very soon, we've hit 4 years solid rocking this blog out. Pretty crazy how time flies and I hope it keeps going on a regular basis. Now it's time to rest after working on this beast.
1 comment:
Epic post. Rack it. Never a bad time in Pittsburgh. Raise the jolly roger!
~ ManDingo
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