The Pittsburgh Purple Skull, cold as it gets, Surprise!

The second leg of the flight on Friday from Atlanta to Pittsburgh was not bad. I got one perk from missing my connection flight, they gave me emergency row seating which was awesome for my long legs and stiff knee. When we landed I immediately started regretting wearing jeans and a baseball shirt with my coat in my checked bag. The airport was coooold. As I waited for my bag to come out I stood on the edge of the space with my legs against a heater so at least my calves felt some warmth. Once my bag showed up I wasted no time opening it up and ripping out a sweatshirt and my coat.

I had forgotten that the coat I brought has a fcked up zipper that is damn near impossible to close. I sat on a bench for literally 10 minutes trying to get it zipped up unsuccessfully. Well there was no way I was going to be walking around in single digit temps with a coat that didn’t close. I decided that after I got the rental vehicle I would find someplace to buy a coat.

The rental experience was different. Pittsburgh is an old airport and is one of the few that still has the rental cars on property. My first walk out into the brutal icy air was a wake up call and reaffirmed my commitment to get more appropriate clothing. The Alamo rental booth had a single woman in it. I showed her my paperwork and she did not look happy to have to come outside to show me the vehicle.

I supposedly reserved a Nissan Rogue but they didn’t have one so I was given another mid-size SUV, a Dodge with a SXT designation. I’m not really sure what the model is called. When the woman said it was all wheel drive that was good enough for me. I set up my GPS with my brother Patrick’s address and headed out into traffic. The Dodge drove nicely although it actually felt like it had more power than I really wanted on potentially slippery roads. If I hit the gas even mildly it pulled hard enough to break loose the tires.

So I knew I needed to get another coat, I didn’t know where exactly I was going to get one. As I was on the highway I saw signs for what appeared to be a big retail area, including a Target which seemed like a good choice. In just the brief walk from the parking lot to the store the bitter cold was biting through the clothing I had on.

As I was walking towards the coat area I spotted these pajama pants that had my dad’s name written all over them. One leg was an Irish flag and the other leg had Irish things like shamrocks, horseshoes and other lucky things. I decided to grab them and add them to his birthday gift collection.

The coat selection wasn’t as large as I thought it might be and I was surprised I didn’t see any of those huge overstuffed type that make you look like the Michelin tire man. I did find a Champion coat that supposedly offered good warmth as well as being somewhat water resistant. The integrated hood was a nice feature too. I tried on an XXL and it fit well on top of the fleece coat I was wearing with the broken zipper. It fit so well that I have been wearing dual coats since that moment. It works well.

I also spotted one of those classic winter hats with the integrated ear flaps and faux fur liner. The fact that it was a camouflage print made it a no brainer snap purchase item. After I paid for the items I immediately put them on as I was leaving the store. I immediately felt a huge difference when I hit the frigid air. It felt much more tolerable.

The drive into Patrick’s took close to an hour because of late afternoon traffic. I have never done anything other than drive past Pittsburgh in my life. As I got into the city I immediately liked aspects of it. Right outside the city are multiple old but pretty vibrant housing districts. Most of the buildings are early 1900’s PA style, similar to what I was used to in Reading. The cool thing is the diversity in construction styles unlike the cookie cutter, rubber stamped housing that is the norm in present day.

Pat warned me to avoid Rialto street which is one of the most steep and narrow streets you will find anywhere in the country. I got to experience that later. So the GPS got me there. As I pulled up to Pat’s duplex he was responsibly shoveling and salting his sidewalk after some light snow had fallen.

We headed inside Pat’s place that he has done some pretty extensive work to. I had seen pictures of a lot of it but never saw it in person. It was as fitting of a living space as I could imagine for Patrick. The space was clean, old yet, modern in certain ways with efficiency and creativity on display all over the place. The Japanese items that adorned the walls were very cool and reflected Patrick’s emersion in Japanese culture which started at a pretty young age and has continued in his job which sends him there pretty regularly.

I got to meet his cat, Sixer, who he adopted through his girlfriend’s sister. Sixer was all black and very friendly. It took very little time before he was up on my lap and chilling out. I was tired from the long day of travel and was happy to just sit on his couch for awhile to catch up. I had not seen Patrick since our sister Meghan’s wedding two years prior.

For dinner Pat drove us to this huge church that was converted into a micro-brewery and a restaurant. It was in a word, amazing. To see the formerly holy space reutilized in such a manner was something I simply never saw before. There were a lot of people there but we didn’t have to wait because there were so many tables inside. Pat said that the repurposing of old churches is actually something pretty common in Pittsburgh. It was the ultimate recycling project.

We both enjoyed our meals. I went with a classic PA meal of perogies, something I rarely if ever eat in Florida. I washed it down with a few in house beers that definitely had more alcohol content than the Miller Lites I would normally go for. It was a very unique way to spend my first meal in Pittsburgh.

When we got back to Pat’s place he put on War Dogs on his Amazon Fire stick, a movie neither of us saw. The movie had some interesting things about it since it was based on a real life scenario where these seemingly normal kids from Miami somehow become arms dealers to several countries, including the US government. Despite the interesting premise I didn’t find the movie all that compelling although I was so tired my attention was fading in and out. I’d give it a B.

I told Pat I was beat. I took a shower in the bathroom that Patrick totally gutted and redid himself. I can’t tell you the last time I showered in a huge clawfoot tub with a pull around shower curtain.

My sleep that night was spotty. Despite having my noise machine app going on my phone I found myself jostled out of sleep repeatedly from outside noise. The walls and windows on old homes were definitely not designed with sound proofing in mind. At one point I heard this odd noise that I couldn’t place. At first it sounded like somebody scraping the sidewalk. I wondered if for some reason Pat was outside already. After it continued incessantly I realized the noise was coming from within the room. It was Sixer, he had pushed open my bedroom door and was licking my luggage. I am not sure what the appeal was but he just wouldn’t stop licking it. I eventually got up and threw the luggage on the corner of the bed. Of course he jumped up on the bed. So to get him to stop licking I just petted him instead. Despite the lack of sleep I thought the whole thing was sort of amusing.

So Patrick suggested we go to breakfast at some famous diner that is nearby. On the way we had one chore to complete, disposal of his badly dried up Xmas tree. I helped him wrap it up in a tarp and compress it enough so it fit in the back of his Honda Element. It just turned out that the tree recycling center was right by the huge Uber complex.

Pittsburgh is a big hub for Uber and they have been using the market to test Uber driverless vehicles. They basically take stock Fords and attach a big collection of electronics to the roof to enable the autonomy. The vehicles still have an actual driver behind the wheel, for now, but the eventual intent is to have a fleet of headless vehicles. Evidently the thought is that the Pittsburgh area has some of the more challenging and diverse driving circumstances around so if the program works here it should work almost anywhere. While we were dumping the tree I actually spotted a couple of the vehicles by the side of the building and snapped a picture of them. It was very cool.

The diner experience was a good one as well. Evidently this place has actually gotten national attention and I understood why. The staff was super friendly and accommodating. The menu was huge. I wound up getting something called a mixed grill where they mix the hash browns into your scrambled eggs. It was quite tasty and far more food than I could finish.

After breakfast Pat asked if I wanted to walk to the nearby small business district where they have all sorts of sidewalk retail going on. I told him that would be fine, with my new coat, furry hat and gloves the arctic temperatures weren’t affecting me as severely as before.

We quickly came upon some unique stores, many of them selling TONS of Steelers gear. As we were in front of one Patrick ran into a neighbor of his. He introduced us and within 30 seconds I got to hear of a property line dispute he was having with somebody. I tried to act supportive and sympathetic even though I had absolutely no idea why he thought I would care.

So we ducked into one store and I saw on some shelves these cool painted ceramic skulls. I immediately thought of Katie who loves these things. They had one painted in purple, her favorite color. I gave little thought to the logistical challenges of getting the fragile piece home intact and just bought it. As I was carrying the bag down the street a minute or so later I was thinking to myself how I needed to make sure I was careful to not bang the bag I was carrying it in into anything. About 15 seconds after I had that thought I decided to change the hand I was carrying the bag in. Because I was wearing gloves my dexterity was not normal. As I made the transfer the bag that had the skull prompted slipped out of my hand and hit the sidewalk, making a sickening sound like a light bulb breaking. I was angry and upset about it, more than I let on to Pat but we both said that possibly it could be glued back together, although I doubted it.

So we continued walking around. I was in disbelief that this many vendors are willing to brave the cold in order to get their goods out on the sidewalk where they were more easily accessible. Pat even pulled me into some large, popular fish market that was a beehive of activity. It almost reminded me of the Seattle fish market without the fish tossing.

I got a good taste of the area so we headed back. We had another errand to run, picking up the cake my step mom ordered for dad’s party. It was at some small French bakery that was very busy. There was a couple in front of us that were ordering an incredible amount of pastries. By the time we left they had filled six boxes with their order and were still going. Pat and I grabbed the large, heavy, rectangular cake and headed back to his place. My job was to keep the cake stable on my lap despite the up and down terrain that a lot of the area has.

So when we got back I pulled out the skull to assess the damage. As expected it was in pieces but most of those pieces were large and the breaks were clean. I pulled all the parts out of the bag on a table by the front door. Pat said he had super glue so we decided to try to reassemble the skull like a big 3D puzzle.

The reassembly process was tedious. Piece by piece we stuck together and held a minimum of 60 seconds counted down by Patrick’s Amazon Echo. Some pieces stuck together cleanly the first time, others required additional time, pressure and glue. We worked together well as we slowly made progress. The last part was the largest and most annoying of all to get in place. We did some cutting and filing to make it fit together. In total I bet we spent an hour on the skull. The glued together result is far from perfect but now has a long back story that should make it more unique, IF I can somehow get it back to Florida without it breaking again.

I helped Pat outside change out his donut spare he had on his VW Golf with the normal tire he just had repaired. Doing car work in the cold adds a new dynamic I am not used to obviously. You want to just get done asap to get the f out of the freezing temperatures. While we were out there Pat did some overdue disconnection of his rain barrel from the gutters which had frozen solid. While I was out there I gave Patrick’s pull up bar that he constructed a couple years ago a try in my full winter regalia. The bar felt solid as I posed for Patrick to take a unique exercise picture.

I wasn’t really paying attention to time when this was all going down. My dad’s party was at 5 and it was something like 1:30. I totally was forgetting about the two and a half hour drive to Marienville we still had to cover. Pat and I quickly took showers and loaded up to go.

On the way there we stopped to pick up Pat’s girlfriend, Nicole. I had never met her before. We didn’t have much time to do more than a quick hello and hug but I instantly got the vibe that she was a really nice person which is great. Patrick deserves that.

So the drive to the Gateway Lodge was long, very long. A good portion of it was on conventional highway but even more of it was not, instead traveling on two lane roads at 60mph+. The roads were salty but fine otherwise. The closer we got to the lodge the more snow was seen by the side of the road.

So when we got there a couple friends of my dad were already at the bar. We grabbed some beers and just hung out for a bit. Shortly Todd, his girlfriend, my niece and his girlfriends daughter showed up as well as the other couple that dad has been friends with for decades. We all milled about awaiting my dad’s arrival. As far as he knew he was just going to dinner with my stepmom and my sister Meghan’s family who had come up earlier in the day.

Finally we saw them pull up. Our group all moved to a far room to hide until dad came inside. When dad turned the corner we all stepped out and got to enjoy the expression on his face of true surprise. It was a very cool moment.

The evening from there on was a big blur of fun, laughs, and stories. I had enough beer to allow me to flow freely in and out of conversations without the issues I sometimes have otherwise. I sat right next to dad so I got to have a front row seat to his experience and I can safely say it was all good.

We didn’t get out of there until after 10’clock. We made a mini-caravan where I followed my dad and Patrick followed me back to my dads place. We stretched the sleeping accommodations of their house to the max. I slept in the open upstairs loft while Patrick and Nicole slept on a futon on the floor downstairs while Meghan, Paul and Cadence were in the single guest bedroom.

The next couple days have no specific script although the reality of the long drive from Pittsburgh changed my plan for my return flight on Wednesday. I originally planned to get up early Wednesday morning to drive back to the Pittsburgh airport, a drive of some three and a half hours. I now think I will be in better shaped if I drive to Pittsburgh Tuesday evening and crash at Patrick’s one more night before making a much shorter drive to the airport Wednesday morning.

It’s been a very busy two days. I think the pace for the next two will slow down, a lot.