Nick Back

Well I am back at work, after having had a nice relaxing vacation. Here is a brief rundown of my time off.

We started out late on a Thursday night towards Ohio. It is usually a 5 ½ to 6 hour drive. Unfortunately, we hit some real bad traffic on I-65 near Indianapolis. There was an accident and they closed the whole road. Which meant that we didn’t move for what seemed like an eternity. That caused us to get to our hotel in Columbus at an extremely late hour.

The next day we farted around my Dad’s house and went to dinner at a really good German restaurant in town called Schmidt’s. They had a buffet of various sausages of which I consumed many. The next day, Saturday was the day we decided to hit the Ohio State Fair.

Let me just say that if you are looking for a place to people watch, the Ohio State Fair may just be the best place on earth. We had a running contest in which we would try to put the Fair visitors into various categories. Here were just some of the things we saw, Mullets, She-Mullets, Exposed Ass Cracks, Half Shirt Violators, I Hate My Dad Uniform’s and People with more fingers then teeth.

The Ohio State Fair is also a place where you can gorge on some really interesting food. I consumed the following:

3 Steaks on a Stick
2 ½ Ears of Corn
1 Foot Long Corn Dog
1 Pulled Pork Sandwich
1 Fried Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich
2 Fresh Squeezed Lemonade’s
1 Beef Taco
1 BBQ Rib
1 Scoop of Ice Cream

I also had a bite of a Fried Pickle, a Deep Fried Snicker’s and a Deep Fried Oreo. It was a miracle I was able to walk erect after consuming all of that. I don’t think my digestive system was right for a week.

We then spent Sunday chilling at my Dad’s house before heading to Pittsburgh on Monday morning. I had been to Pittsburgh when I was fifteen but had not been back since. The drive itself was pretty uneventful and we got to the hotel in a little more then two hours.

I booked a Best Western off of the internet. I wanted to stay somewhere near the ballpark and the prices were not that great. The only place that I found which was not a complete rip-off was this Best Western which from the pictures I saw looked nice. Well, let me just say pictures can lie.

In a word the place was a dump. It would have been modern in 1975, but it didn’t seem like they had remodeled since the Ford Administration. They stuck us in a prison cell sized room. The place did not offer room service. The bathroom was small with a shower head that was about as strong as an 80-year-old’s piss stream. It took the hotel staff until 4 o’clock the next day to make up the room. It was a joke.

This caused Joyce and me to have a somewhat negative view of the Steel City. That was until we hit the South Side of town. There they have a nice little area in which you can find a lot of nice shops and restaurants. The downtown area was a tad dirty but maybe I am just spoiled by Chicago.

On our last night in Pittsburgh we hit the Pirates game at PNC Park. The park itself was really nice. I got a pulled pork sandwich at Manny’s Pit located in the outfield. There I met former Pirate great Manny Sanguillen. I got his autograph and he was kind enough to pose for a picture with me. The Pork sandwich was really good. I also knocked back an Iron City beer which was quite tasty. The ballpark hot dog was not great, but really that was the only negative about the park. I had great seats and was really impressed by the park.

We finally left for home last Wednesday. The drive from Pittsburgh back to Chicago was pretty good. Didn’t hit much traffic and it is a straight shot west from I-80. I spent the rest of the week at a Cub game Thursday and with the family on Friday and Saturday. I used yesterday to hit the theater to catch Superbad (Which I thought was really funny) and relax at home.