October 31st, 2015

Heard a new term that some Asians, mainly Japanese, use to describe the smell of Westerners.  As we use more butter in our diets than they, the term bata-kusai, or butter stinkers is used to describe our odor.  That said, I have seen a version of ramen where an entire stick of butter is melted into a single bowl.   I like a good racial stereotype as much as the next guy, but love finding the places where they are not linear.

One of the first things you notice in Asia are the quantity of people wearing face masks.  If I heard it once, heard it a thousand times that the reason they do so is that they want to prevent the spread of disease by containing their own illness within the confines of the mask.  Always suspected this was bull shit and that they wear them to protect themselves from everyone else (and the nasty ass pollution in some parts), but what cinched for me is watching them when they sneeze.  I have yet to see one local cover their mouth/face when they let one go.

And in this weeks "the person that is bugging me lately" file is the person that listens to music off his phone speakers in public instead of using head phones .  These people are not confined to one culture as I have seen every color of the rainbow doing this, and the popularity of it seems to be increasing.  It is far less intrusive than the dudes that used to bring the giant boom boxes around with them in the 80's, but at least there was better fidelity with those and you had to respect their dedication as it cost a small fortune in batteries to power one of them for a couple hours.  However, I find the phone speaker guy (and it is always guys) far more annoying as when one does this, they are showing two things to the world.  First, there is no concept that other people might not want to hear your crappy choice of music especially being played out of dinky ass speakers.  Second, that you have zero taste in music anyway as you are able to enjoy it coming out of said crappy speakers.  I understand that I am in a minority here as I love music with a passion.  Similar to the wine aficionados (or whatever aficionado you are) that spend a good chunk of their life researching, thinking about and engaging with their passion.  That is me with music.  But when you are attacking me with your shitty pro tools created mindless top 40 Disney developed "music" out of your iPhone on the street, it would be the same as me knocking down the wine guy on the street and giving him an enema with a bottle of Two Buck Chuck.   When one of the wine dudes is spouting off about some bottle or vintage and I tell him that I am happy drinking wine out of a box, they get the same disgusted look on their face as I do when people say that the Beatles (and their music for Montessori daycares) are the greatest band of all time.  In thinking about this, I wondered if I was being hypocritical as I will play music as loud as it will go when I am driving around, usually with the windows rolled down.  Was sitting at a traffic light yesterday and the scooter rider's heads all turned to see who was playing The Replacements 'Gary's Got a Boner' at 120 decibels.  Me?  Hypocritical?  No way Johnny boy, keep on truckin'.

Taiwan weather update.  Crappy SE Asia weather to continue indefinitely.  The highlight from this week was the 4 day stretch with no measurable wind, which culminated in pollution reaching a level that forced the cancellation of all outdoor activities at school.  To be fair, this was the first instance since we've been here where that call out has been made, but 3 years of looking out the window, suspect it should have happened a lot more and people are just getting more attuned to looking out for it.  And in looking at the forecast, the best looking day is next Tuesday when a dazzling Seattleite like myself is looking forward to a "dreary" day.

I want the job of writing the recaps for these...77 as a high and 72 as a low is Dreary?  I would have gone with Heavenly.

To button up last time's recounting of the lost keys episode, as we were telling the story to friends, I became pissed at both the rental car industry and the Chrysler corporation.  I hadn't noticed until this mishap that the rental car places always give you two keys, but they are affixed by a ring that is in a soldered closed loop that makes taking them apart impossible.  Obviously they don't trust their clients to be able to handle the prospect of having two keys in different places at once.  The only reason I can think of that they would give two keys that are basically one is that if the battery goes out in one, you can still use the other to start the car, but is another example of a society that does not treat adults like adults. 

As for the Chrysler corporation, we were originally issued a 2014 Chrysler 300.  The book on them is that they are the car company for old people, and our 2014 model not only had no USB outlets (I mentioned that the car was made for people living in 2014 right?), but the dashboard had a clock that looked like it was from 1960, with hour and minute hands.  I meant to take a photo of it, but in all the nuttiness of the key in the storm drain forgot to do so.  Am sitting at the airport like a kid on Christmas morning, wondering if I am going to get the new BMX bike that all of my friends had, and what comes rolling around the corner but another Chrysler 300.  By the way, I didn't get the BMX bike either, but something low budget my dad found that was called a Philipus.  I was the envy of Singing Wood Dr. to be sure.  This 300 was a 2015 edition and low and behold, there was USB outlets but in true testament to the inept decision making processes of the US auto industry, who think that clever means good, you have to see the dashboard for this rig.

Check out the location and design of the PRNDL  Sorta where they traditionally are located, but is a twist knob that has no heft and little resistance, like the volume control on an old stereo.  And it is positioned right below the car radio controls, in similar feel and size to those controls and out of the sight lines off the road.  You know why people like German and Japanese cars so much, other than the fact you get better mileage when they lie about emission controls, is that they make their cars ergonomically classic with controls that are solid and smart.  Can't recall an American car that I've been in in decades where the dashboard wasn't either crappy and things broke, or too cute and things broke.  As the great David St. Hubbins once said, "there is a fine line between clever and stupid."

We had a great morning in Baltimore, visiting a school there and then having lunch with some old college friends, John and Jodi Miller.  Hadn't seen them since their wedding in the early 90's, by far the best wedding I have attended (will have to recount that amazing weekend in Cleveland some day).  My folks come from Baltimore and we had a lot of relatives there, so visited often over the years but hadn't been for a few decades.  There is a lot to love about Baltimore but it was city in crises when we visited.  The amount of obviously impoverished neighborhoods stretched for longer than I can ever recall seeing anywhere, and the night before we arrived was at the height of the police pullback due to the Freddie Gray clusterfuck and there were 11 murders.  But that is no reason to give up as there are great people there and it has a lot to offer but by far the most awesome thing about it are the crabcakes.  If you've ever had the blue crabs from the Chesapeake, you'll know that it is hard to enjoy any other type of crab.  And the way they make a crabcake in Baltimore is to mix the crab with as little other filler as possible and then broil them instead of frying.  It is an art form that has never been equaled anywhere else I've tried and to say I was looking forward to having one that day is an understatement.   I challenged John and Jodi to find the best crabcake place in Baltimore to meet for lunch and they freaking slam damn a jamma'd it by taking us to a place called Alchemy On 36.  It is rare when you anticipate something so much that it exceeds your dreams, and maybe it was that I hadn't had a real Baltimore crabcake in years, but the crabcake that day was an 11.  Thank you John and Jodi.

Next stop was DC...a lot of history in that town for Betty and I as we both spent many years there as students at The American University.  The things we wanted to relive aren't necessarily on the typical Things To Do In DC lists, but we did take a day to ride the Hop On/Off Bus around the Mall.  DC is such a unique town and the vistas you get there are iconic. 

DC also had the second of Carolyn's "must do's" for the trip...a visit to Georgetown Cupcakes (from the show DC Cupcakes). 

We didn't see any of the "stars" of the show, but the cupcakes were truly amazing.  We took the opportunity to buy a couple of dozen to take to a party and felt like conquering heroes

DC also afforded us another opportunity to continue our MLB stadium tour with a visit to Nats Park.  We were lucky (OK, maybe not lucky as these things are carefully orchestrated months in advance) to see my beloved Dodgers take on the Nats.  We got extra baseball as the night before we went, they had a power surge at the park and the game was suspended, so we caught the last 4 innings of that game (a Dodger defeat) and then our regularly scheduled game, which was a glorious Dodger win behind a stellar Kershaw outing.  The crowd had a collective "oooh" the three times that Clayton struck out Bryan Harper looking on some of the sickest curveballs you'll ever see.

Nats park is nice as all of the new stadiums are.  Would put the food in the middle of the pack.  The location is weird in that it is in an industrial zone, but is within walking distance of the Capitol building so has a ton of potential.  Is kind of boring now, but you can see it becoming cool (in contrast to where the Mets play that is likely to be a dump for the foreseeable future).  As for the fans, they suffer from the same problem that a lot of institutions do in DC, which is the transience of the population.  A sizable chunk of the locals are transplants so while they will follow the Nats, and even don their gear, their true allegiance lies elsewhere and are quick to abandon the team when things go wrong.  And a lot has gone wrong for that team in the last few years.  We were there just as the Mets caught them in the standings and you could feel the disdain of the team by the fans as they entered the "here we go again" stage of the season.  I should add that the only two teams that have never appeared in a World Series are the Nationals/Expos and the Seattle Mariners, so I know me some loser fanbases.

Paul and I went to the game with my college friend Laurie, who has partial season tickets.  Great seats, which happened to be two rows behind another college buddy (the Beeze) of mine and we arranged to all hang out for the game.  Hadn't seen Beeze since 1995 when he visited Seattle to catch the Dead shows at Memorial Stadium (which was the last time I ever saw Jerry).   There a many memorable Beeze moments, mostly related to Dead road trips, but the most classic was the night we went for Chinese food after some show somewhere in the mid-80's, and he orders tripe.  The waitress, in classic Chinese accented English says to him, "That's organ", and his face lights up in a huge smile and he says, "Extra spicy please!".  Good times.

As the trip was designed to take the Boy to many college campuses as possible, a visit to our alma mater was a must.  We made reservations for the 10AM info session followed by an 11AM tour.  The school even sent us a letter confirming our 10AM reservation and included a parking pass to help ease our visit.  We were impressed as it is not easy getting mail to Taiwan and was eagerly anticipating seeing old AU. 

We show up 15 minutes early to check in and the lady behind the desk, who's title is New Student Liaison, says that the info session started at 9AM but that we could still join the tour at 10.  What?  I have the letter dated only a couple weeks previous showing a 10am start and she says to us, "looks like somebody made a mistake."  The blood in my brain boils like it's in a microwave on high and I am about to lay into her about she being the face of the school to new students and that she IS the school to prospective freshman whose first impression is her taking zero responsibility for a pretty significant screw-up and this is typical of the poor post graduate experience we've had with American University (I have a list).  I turn to start my diatribe and stop in my tracks cause she is black.  You tell me, is it racist that I didn't lay into her for  fear of being considered a racist?  That decision in the moment has had me puzzled ever since.

The tour was a ton of fun for us (the boy wasn't impressed but American isn't strong in the areas that he wants to concentrate).  A couple of highlights...this is the amphitheatre on campus that was home to our annual Spring concert.  My first year there was going to be an awesome one...The Alarm (who were smoking hot at the time), Stevie Ray Vaughn and the Pretenders (who had just released their Learning To Crawl album which was the first since the deaths of Pete Farndon and James Honneyman Scott and was the  album of the moment).  Word got out as to who was on the bill and there were reports that bus loads of people from as far away as Ohio were coming to the free concert.  The rumors started that they were considering canceling the show as the school couldn't handle the expected crowd and we stayed up all night talking about it only to learn at 3AM via the colleges radio station (that could only be heard within a 500 yard radius of the tower) that the show was off.  Devastation.  They tried to make it up to us a couple of weeks later with a double bill of John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (the Springsteen sound-alikes from the Eddie and the Cruisers movie) and Chaka Khan (who was, is and will always be cool).

These are the steps in front of my dorm that I jumped down and fractured my ankle that would ultimately disintegrate to the point where I had to have it fused with a graft from my hip 15 years later. 

I tried not to be the annoying alumni by telling our student tour guide about the school, but couldn't help share a couple of fun facts from back in the day.  One was how an acquaintance of mine stole the huge stones that read American University as they were installing them.  Was quite a controversy at the time and he still cannot believe how he was able to get these massive and heavy concrete slabs down to his off campus apartment.  They were buried in an unmarked grave at some point and to our knowledge, are still resting in peace.

Another fun fact was that the centerpiece of the schools buildings, The Graydon Center, which houses the gym, admin offices and a ton of other stuff, and was built in the 4 years I attended AU and naturally opened the semester after we graduated, was originally named the Khashoggi Center for the man that donated the money to build it...Adnan Khashoggi.  It was renamed one year later after Khashoggi was indicted as a center piece in the Iran-Contra scandal.  His name appears now only on the list of doners over $250K. 

There are so many more scandals, stories and embarrassing moments I would love to share, but have to end this trip down memory lane somewhere.  I will say that this is where we noticed the guy that seemed to have been on every campus tour.  Not the exact same person, but they guy.  Am talking about the dad who looks like he just came from/is on his way to a bird watching outing.  There was one on every tour and his uniform without exception included short sleeve plaid shirt, expensive digital camera with a lens not to be less than 6 inches long, urban hiking boots with black socks, very expensive hat from The Walking Store and cargo pants complete with something looking like a huge pile of crap in the cargo pockets. 

Oh yeah, was just looking over my notes and was reminded of the girl on our tour from New Jersey.  At one point the guide was discussing the food options at the school, which has organic/vegan/gluten free everything options as opposed to the institutional slop we were fed in the 80's, and NJ girl (we would have called her a JAP, short for Jewish American Princess back in the day) pipes up with this question.  "Can I get a real New Jersey bagel cause I can't live without a real New Jersey bagel.  You would have needed a stick of butter to cover our eye rolls.  Real bagels are from New York City, everyone knows that. 

 

One more thing...this is where I formulated a multi-million dollar product idea that I now offer to you freely.  Not necessarily a product, but a product name.  So-Like-Ums.  This product would be marketed to teen-age to early twenty something girls that say "So", "like" and/or "um" before, during or after every sentence.  For example, So like um, do they like have um real New Jersey bagels here?  Am thinking this product could be a type of yogurt or food offering that sounds healthy but is loaded with sugar and chemicals that make you stupid(er).

 

Briefly, in the neighborhood tour after AU, stopped by Tenley Market, which still stands as it did back in '86.  About a mile away, this was the closest place to get food off campus and was open 24 hours.  For a certain period, we had acquaintances that worked there and would charge us pennies on the dollar for our purchases.  The amount of bean and cheese microwave burritos that were consumed between the hours of 1 and 3AM is incalculable.

And this is our Ellicott St group house, which looks exactly as it did when we rented it for the year.  Too many stories to share here, and many more that can never be told to outsiders went down at this place.  A petition signed by the neighbors in a 3 block radius to have us evicted was rumored but never seen.

A couple of the girls in that house still live in the DC area.  Laurie (from the Nats game above and whose car was the one in the spin out in rural Pennsylvania from last time) is one. 

To close out that story, after Monica and I drove in silence back from the Pennsylvania/W.VA border in a car that was cracked in half, I had to break the news to Laurie, who was still blissfully enjoying her Spring break in Florida.  Obviously, this is before cell phones and for some reason that I can't recall, the phones in her place, where I was also staying, thanks again Laurie, weren't working, but I do remember having to change 5 dollars worth of quarters and walking across Connecticut Ave to the Chevy Chase Café pay phone to call her (how we knew numbers and where people were at any given time back then seems so antiquated). 

I call her and tell her the news and at some point she asks where the accident happen.  I say honestly, "Pennsylvania" and she replies "Pennsylvania Avenue".  It is unclear and still debated whether she said it as a question or as a statement but I do recall replying in the negative with something that must have sounded like, mmmrrrargghaarrrggh. 

She ultimately got a new car, albeit one that was far shittier than the nice 280Z that we wrecked, I think I paid (or rather my mom paid for me) for her rental car while the insurance claim went through, and then a couple of months later I get a call and Laurie starts yelling at me, "You crashed my car in fucking Pennsylvania!"  Not a time that we see each other goes by where we do not recount those more innocent times.

Another of the Ellicott house residents was The Hen.  From this point forward, I will refer to all people by their nicknames.  We were not in a fraternity, but everyone we knew had one.  I was talking to my nephew, who graduated college a few years ago, about how excited I was to visit my old school.  He asked if that is where I got the nickname Gomez and told him yes and that it is hard to remember a person that didn't have one.  He said proudly that his nickname was "Post", which is actually his last name and I scoffed.  Kids today are SO lame. 

Anyhoo, we talked the Hen into having a party for us one night while we were in DC at her place.  A lovely time was had...we beat up some crabs and settled in to an epic game of "do you remember so and so".  The AU alums in attendance that night, clockwise from me in the middle were Z.I.F., Hen, Spoo and Sucky.

One of my high school buddies son is a current AU student, and he and his wife and son came over too and they got a peek into AU life from 30 years ago.

 

 

A great night.  I will love those people forever.  I know that it is a cliché to say that they were the greatest days of my life, but they were.  During the evening as we were recounting the good times, a lot of nicknames came up and I wrote down what we could remember and list them now for posterity

Gomez/Yogi

Beeze

Hen

Spoo

Sucky

Z.I.F.

The Turd (formerly the Fat Turd)

The McDowell Drunks

Maura Fuck You

Bill Loves Beer

Burn Victim Bill

The Rat

The Hammer

The Myth

Wiggy/Twiggy/Plants

Legs

Ann with the Sensuous Lips

The Penis

Penis Menkes/Massamenkes

Doc

LP

The Study Punks

Cowboy/Cowpie

Tonto/The Cadaever

Sweat Thing

The Ball Guy

The Worm

Art Russ Jr.

Rip Off Rog/Rehab Rog

The Comet

Skippy/Chicken Head

Mike TV

The Sea Urchin

Dan Dan the Gummout Man

The Attitude

Cosmic Ray

Big Jim McBob

Smooth Bottom

Boots

Bootessa

The Rail/The Pear

Billy Tool

Goldfinger

AmBo

The Chissler

Davey Mo and Howie Mo

Storm/Twanda

Super Dave.

 

These are your American University alumni (or at least they attended AU for a period of time).  And remember our motto, AU Apathetic University...Love It or Transfer

 

October 18th, 2015

Morning,

Whoever was on the team that signed off on how Google docs functions is a sadist.  Great in theory, but the functionality of the output is counterintuitive at best and more like a Chinese finger trap.  Why can't it communicate better and act more like excel?  And I am fully aware that my trouble with it could possibly be due to the fact that I was born in 1965, so just missed being the right age to have started with the computer revolution and too old to easily grasp the newest thing. 

Sorry that this space has been on hold for a while, but this is a "busy" time of the year for me.  Some of the Fall projects are ending and intend on being more regular in writing.  One of those projects ended on Friday night as the annual Community Center gala and Auction took place.  I do a few things for that event and the final couple of weeks takes a bunch of time that I may normally spend here. 

Going to an auction always reminds me of the things that one should never buy when attending one.  Betty decided to bid on an item and she broke one of the cardinal rules of auction shopping.  She "won" an outing for four for a river tracing hike in a town called Hualien.  No question that it is a beautiful place and that it would be fun for those that aren't crippled, but know that with the lack of stability I have in my knees, it will be a special bit of torture that is every wife's dream.

Which gets back to the rules of auction buying.  Whether it be in silent or live, there are certain words or phrases in an items description that should make them automatically be taken out of consideration.  "Hike" and its synomyms trek, traipse, explore are certainly on that list.  Some other red flags include, 'rise and shine', 'you and your friends', ' do it yourself' and 'learn'.  Would love to hear more from you to add to that list.

One of my jobs for the auction is ticket sales and its resulting tasks of taking meal orders and table location and seating assignments. While it is busy work, it is certainly not hard, but there are always a couple of people where getting their details takes several laps, and it is always the same ones every year.  Waiting till the last second to make their meal choice or payment, so that you have to hunt them down with multiple calls and emails, only for them to ask questions that had been answered weeks earlier.  I get it, you're a busy guy/gal, but why not take care of things right away and clear it off your list?  Methinks that you are "busy" cause you are unorganized spiritually.  But my favorite this time was the guest who could not eat anything cooked in red wine.  While I rolled my eyes at this affliction, as I do with most of the adults who have developed intolerance to nuts, gluten, life, I know most of them are just calling out for attention, but of course had to find out for her just in case. 

It took a while to get the information from the kitchen as to what meal had red wine as an ingredient and did not find out until the day of the event.  I looked for this person (who has made at least one previous appearance in this diary in the pain in the ass file and is tangentially connected to our family in a significant way) at the event to tell her that the beef contained red wine, but the fish and veggie options did not.  Cut to the dinner hour and am walking around the tables and see that she is devouring her dinner.  One guess as to what meal she chose.

Was worried a few weeks ago when I put in the Yin section that the heat finally broke.  Since then, it has reverted back to stifling dead air humidity and full blown typhoon.  Truly delightful.  It's been three years and I know full well that the worst isn't over until late October, but those two nice days in September had me wishfully hoping the worst was behind.  While the weather broke this week and it has been nothing short of fantastic, the shittiness of the weather when it is bad makes the climate go back into the Yang category permanently.

Replacing it in the Yin section?  We let our kids go to school without the fear some nut job is going to open fire on their classroom. 

Looking at the last post, the summer travelogue had us finishing off NYC.  Our next destination was a 24 hour stay in Pittsburgh, PA.  It is a 6 hour drive, so to break it up, we planned for a short stop in Hershey, PA  to see what all the fuss was about.  Didn't have enough time to visit the amusement park, but we did take a chocolate tasting class (way better than any wine tasting) and marveled at the variety and quantity of all the candy selections.  The Reese's room is as close to nirvana as you will find on Earth.

We got asked a bunch, why would you go to Pittsburgh?  If you recall, the excuse for the east coast run was to take Paul around to see college campuses.  Philly obviously has a ton and seemed like a natural destination between NY and DC, but my not so secret agenda was to catch as many MLB games as we could.  Since the Phillies were on the road the day we had available, saw that the Pirates had a Sunday night game against the Cardinals on tap, which worked perfectly into our schedule.  I had heard that PNC park was one of the best around and it exceeded all description. 

All the new parks are well appointed, but there are three qualities that differentiate them.  Fan base, food and setting.  For fan base, I like ones that are blue collar, knowledgeable and rabid without being mean or dicks about it.  Yankee fans score lowest on this scale.  In San Diego, they had setting and food down, but their fans have been so beaten down and are a bit jaded from living in paradise that they are not rabid.  Pittsburgh fans were just right.

As for the setting, they put the place right on the river, with the hills, bridges and downtown as a backdrop, and it being within easy walking distance of very cool neighborhoods, as good a setting as I've ever experienced.

 

Their one stumble was food choices.  Not terrible, but gut busting nasty greasy Americana was just about all there was.  I know that a desire for artisinal veggie wraps seem to be counter to my desire for a working man's atmosphere, but we were reaching for the Tums after our bucket of gross chicken wings.

It didn't hurt that the game was between the two teams that ended up with the best records in all of baseball, and was an extra inning affair with the Cardinals scoring 2 in the top of the 10th only for the Pirates to come back with three in the bottom half in dramatic fashion.  Our hotel was less than a block away from the stadium, so the commute home was spent with jubilant Pirate fans giddy after a win against their biggest rival.  Truly the best game of the 15 we saw over the summer.

And they had a giant pierogi race.

The next morning was dedicated to the campus tours.  Pretty amazing city for that as there are three major schools in the Oakland neighborhood.  We devoted our day split between Carnegie Mellon and Pitt (Dusquene, pronounced by the boy as Du-kes-nee was two blocks down but didn't have time for more than a drive-by).  Carnegie Mellon and Pitt are literally right across the street from each other.  We sent the Boy and Babydoll on the walking tour of CM while Betty and I strolled about the college town.  We noticed that when we were on the Carnegie Mellon side of the street that the percentage of Asians went up at least 30% as opposed to the Pitt side. 

We didn't go on the tour with the kids as we were waiting to meet up with Betty and my friend from college, Erin, who was spending the summer in West Virginia with her parents.  We were tooling around waiting for her, and all of a sudden, she pulls up in her car...I made the mistake of thinking just how perfect our karma and timing have been.  We hadn't seen her in at least a decade and it was great to spend a couple hours playing 'do you remember so and so'.

A funny story about Erin and Pittsburgh.  We all new each other best in 1986 when we went on a semester abroad in Argentina together.  There were a total of 30 of us on that semester and we were all friends to some degree, with the inevitable sub groups developing over the course of the semester.  Betty and Erin were in the group we called the Study Punks cause they were equal parts serious about their studies, but would also rip it up when we went out partying.

A couple of years later (according to the police report, it was April 16th 1989), I am in DC visiting friends.  I had already graduated, but some old friends from Argentina were visiting DC and decided to go back and hang out with them.  The Argentines had left and I was there a couple more days as most of my friends were still in school or the DC area.  One evening, was at a party and at around two in the morning, another girl from the Argentina semester group, Monica, and I think it is a great idea to go visit our friend Erin who was living in Wheeling, West Virginia.  Monica didn't have a car, but I had borrowed my friend Laurie's 280Z for the week (as she was in Florida for Spring break).  I should probably say that I "rented" her car as I gave her 40 bucks to do so.

So off we go in the middle of the night/wee hours of the morning.  Obviously, this is before cell phones and even email, so we had no idea if she was even home.  I can't even remember how we knew which way to go as neither of us had ever been near West Virginia before.  About 5-6AM, I am starting to feel the effects of the night before and realize I cannot drive any further.  I should also mention that when we left DC, it was a pleasant Spring night, but as we passed through the Alleghenies, there were some snow flurries. 

I turn to Monica and say that I need to rest and ask if she able to drive.  She is awake enough but says she has never driven a manual before.  "No problem" says I..."I can teach you".  Took a few minutes, and a few grinds of my friend's transmission, but she gets the hang of it, and since we are on the highway and the need to shift gears is minimized, I drift off to sleep.  Until...

I am woken up to Monica screaming while our car is spinning 360 degrees on black ice.  Believe the signs that say Bridges Ice Before Roadway.  It is 6ish in the morning on a weekend, so traffic is light and so hit no other cars, but end up in the large gully separating the two directions of the freeway.  The car is in the ditch sufficiently so that we cannot drive out, but we could detect no damage.  We are both a little freaked and somehow manage to hitchhike to a gas station that has a tow truck that can help pull us back on the road.

We get back to the car and immediately notice that it is not in the same position we left it.  Some other car had spun out on the same patch of ice and smacked into our car.  We pull it out and take it to the gas station where we learn that the frame is cracked.  The car still drives however, so Monica and I climb in and head back to DC in total silence the entire way.  As we are leaving the gas station, I look to my left and see the Pittsburgh skyline, which was as close as I had been to that city until we saw Erin there this summer.

In the next diary installment where we visit DC, will finish this story about what happened after our return.

So back to Pittsburgh 2015.  The kids finish Carnegie Mellon tour and meet Betty, Erin and I at famous Pittsburgh establishment Primanti's for lunch.  Our Pitt tour is at 1:00 PM and Erin has to get back to her kids, so we take our picture and start to say our goodbys.  I snap this photo of the kids in front of the Taiwan Café and we are laughing as it had unsurprisingly long since gone out of business.  You can see the back of our rental car parked there but cannot see the homeless guy sleeping outside of the Café.

We go to the car so I can feed the parking meter and put some stuff in the trunk.  We are going to join the kids on the Pitt tour and am a bit distracted saying goodbye to Erin and as I am closing the trunk, drop the car keys.  We all watch as time slows down and the keys slowly slide a few inches and fall through the giant grate into the sewer. 

We figure that we can retrieve them, so send the kids on the tour, say so long to Erin, and then the fun begins.  Since the Taiwan Café is closed, we go into the business next door to ask who we should call to help us with the sewer.  The business is a tanning salon cleverly called the Tanning Pitt.  The girls in there give us a number for the city department of water and power, who then says we need to call 911.  We feel a bit awkward doing so, but when in Rome...  At the same time, a Good Samaritan lady has taken interest in the homeless guy sleeping outside the Café.  Have seen my share of people sleeping on the street and this guy looks quite happy.  He is using his coat as a pillow, it a warm, but not hot July afternoon, and he has a nice looking leftover salad lying next to him.  We figure he's OK, barely gave his presence a first thought and certainly not a second, but Good Samaritan lady feels he is in distress and must have also called 911 simultaneously as to when we did.  A few minutes later, a half dozen cop cars and ambulance show up for the sleeping guy (who they ultimately take away in the ambulance but leave his salad on the street...figure he must have been pissed about that).  We debated the merits of the Good Samaritan and her actions the rest of the day.

After the ambulance left, we approached the cops telling them we had just made a 911 call about the keys.  He heard that call and that someone should be coming out but also added the  first brilliant suggestion as to how we should get them back.  The cop says, "what you need is a big magnet on a string".  We ask if he has any ideas where to get such an item and he does not.  Then he says he may have one back at the station and would check.  We never see him again. 

About an hour later, a trash truck pulls up.  They look curiously at our situation and have no solution to offer.  The car is partially parked on top of the sewer grate, so we can't lift it.  He says they aren't equipped to help us but thought they would stop by to tell us that they heard on the radio that the department of water and power was not going to come out.  While we appreciated their appearance, we knew that we had to proceed with option two as they drove off. 

We then called the rental car company.  Obviously, a spare set of keys was not in the area as we picked the car up in NYC and it had Florida plates, and we learned it would take 24 hours to have another set cut.  As we had an AM appointment in Baltimore the next morning, staying in Pitt for the night was not an option.  The solution was to have it towed to one of their locations 3 miles away and we get a new car. The phone calls took about an hour before they found a tow truck and location to take our ride to, but that it would not be until 4-5PM before they would arrive.  They also mentioned that we would be charged some hefty fees for key and car replacement.  Since we had a couple of hours to wait, Betty went back into the Tanning Pitt to ask to use the restroom.  The girls were surprised we were still there and came out to talk to us.  We then decided to make constructive use of our time and tried to fish the keys out in hopes we could get out of town and save the penalty fees..  The girls think for a minute and then remember there is a 4 ft wooden stick behind the door.  We grab a hook from the shop that is used to hold tanning supplies, tape it to the end of the stick and I try to fish out the keys.  By the way, written on the wooden pole were the words "Pimp Stick".  I put the stick/hook device in the grate and it barely reaches the water and definitely not to the bottom where the keys are.  The girls go to the back of the shop and find another 4ft long piece of PVC pipe.  We tape it all together into an 8ft long pole.  I made the girls pose with me and the pole. 

So I have my 8 ft pole and go to work only to learn that the water is about 3 feet deep, so that is 7 feet from street level to sewer bottom.  You can see from this picture just how deep it was. 

You can also note the dude watching this effort.  Seeing a guy fishing into a sewer with a giant pimp stick is definitely curious, and there was no shortage of people coming up to watch or offer suggestions.  In addition to the magnet, we heard thoughts about nets and buckets and several "do you have another key?".  I had nothing but time to kill and even though I realized early that this was a pointless exercise, kept on keeping on.  At one point, I am deep into it and feel the presence of a person standing over me.  I turn and a guy with his arm in a sling is looking over my shoulder and is definately in my personal space.  I say to him, 'thar's gold in them there sewers".  I thought it was funny, but he just turned and walked away.

The kids come back from the tour and finally, around 5ish (remember this started at 1pm), so does the tow truck.  The dude gets it on top the flatbed, looks at his paperwork and says, "I'm taking you to the bus station?"  I say I don't know but the rental car lady says our replacement car is 3 miles away.  The cab only fits two people so the Tanning Pitt ladies suggest a place for the family to grab some dinner and I hop in.  About 10 minutes into the drive, I say to the dude that this feels like more than three miles away.  He tells me he decided that the bus station was wrong and that we were going to the airport instead.  Uh, OK dude.  40 minutes later, at 6pm we get to the airport. 

The rental car guys were not expecting us, but they rallied quickly and pulled up a new car in a couple of minutes.  All of our luggage was still in the trunk, so as they are pulling the new car around, I tell the tow truck driver we need to get into the car, which has been locked the entire time.  He opens it easily enough with the slimjim and we push the truck open button, which doesn't work without the key in the ignition.  Fuck.

So now what...the back seats fortunately fold down so there is access to the trunk, but the hole to get in back is not large.  Just big enough to pull through a carry on sized piece of luggage.  Fortunately, that is what we had, but we had a lot of them and the trunk was packed so tightly, that it was impossible to just pull them through.  I had to rearrange the bags like a puzzle, then cram my fat ass into the hole to reposition the other stuff in order to start getting the bags out. 

New car and all luggage in tow, now had to drive the 50 minutes back to where the family was.  Walk into the restaurant and there they are, with a giant piece of cake that was only half eaten as they were full.  It was now 7pm and I was pretty hungry.  As we had a 4 hour drive to Baltimore ahead of us, asked if they had gotten me a sandwich or something.  They hadn't. 

As I saw the skyline of Pittsburgh in the rearview mirror could not help but think that my two times seeing it resulted in convoluted driving misshaps.  About 10 minutes into the drive to Baltimore, Babydoll and Betty are passed out in the back seat.  I look over at the Boy and he has a pensive look on his face.  I ask him what he is thinking about and he said school.  Putting the idea of schools into his brain was the point of the trip, so I felt like a decent parent and that the mission was accomplished.  As he tilted his seat back, he felt the need to tell me how much I would have liked the restaurant.  That his open faced garlic sausage sandwich was incredible.  My stomach grumbled as he fell asleep.

The next three hours were the best of the day...listening to sports talk as western Pennsylvania turned to darkness.  At certain points, fireflies lit up on the shoulders of the highway while I pondered life and the road ahead.  Things like, why do they require that slow moving trucks travel in the far left, instead of the far right, lane in Pennsylvania, and what is the difference between the signs that say "Falling Rocks" and "Fallen Rocks"? 

Was certainly trying to make up for lost time and was going as fast as the traffic and safety would allow.  About 3 hours into the drive (about an hour away from Baltimore), I feel Paul stirring in the passenger seat.  Am cooking along at 91 miles an hour in the right lane (as the 18 wheelers are going slow in the far left), when Betty screams "Oh My God!" from the back seat. 

I get that in the stupor of waking up from a long nap, passing a truck on the wrong side at 91mph may have been disorienting, but freaking out the driver surely didn't help.  She swears she saw the speedometer say it was over 100 but I know for a fact it was 91 when she flipped out and did not go over 93 during the entire drive.  Paul sheepishly tried to confirm that it was 91 but wisely shut up as we spent the next 5 minutes yelling at each other about safety.   I put the cruise control onto 60 mph and we drove in silence for the last 40 miles. 

I had a bag of Fritos out of the hotel vending machine for dinner at 11pm (along with a Reese's peanut butter cup that I had saved from the day before) and laid down on the bed to watch one of the channels I miss most living overseas...the Game Show Network.  A vintage episode of Family Feud was on and the first question was, Name something that happens while traveling that can ruin a vacation...the second most popular response?  Losing your keys.