Pittsburgh, PA - Day 2

Bike Rodeo

Every year the local Pittsburgh area police department and EMT puts on a bike rodeo, and we just happened to come on the weekend it was happening, and so we brought the kids' bikes with us on the trip.

What a great idea, this rodeo.  They safety checked the bikes, and gave all the kids free helmets, adjusted correctly by the EMTs.  There was also a free raffle for a new bike (they gave away 4 bikes), and Elizabeth won!  ...  Elijah was VERY disappointed that he didn't win the cool green boys' bike.  In an act more Miciah-ish than Elijah-ish, he cried and sulked for about 15 minutes.  Then he was over it.

I thought the kids would get bored relatively quickly, but they rode around the parking lot obstacle course for over 2 hours!

By the end, Miciah was noticeably better at riding her bike (remember, she's only been riding without training wheels for a few weeks, which really only equals a few hours total riding time).  She was also noticeably sunburned.

Of course, what did Tank do most of the time?

He's an observer.  Though he enjoyed riding the course as well.  He just didn't have the 2-hour stamina like the older kids did.  (I took lots of pictures of him sucking his fingers, watching the other kids.  When he's older I'd like him to realize just how often he sucked those fingers.)

As we were driving back to Aliess' house, Elijah asked if we could come back to the Bike Rodeo next year.  It was that cool.

Downtown Pittsburgh and the Incline

My friend had told me that downtown Pittsburgh had been voted one of the prettiest skylines in the world.  I was skeptical.  I mean, I'm fond of Cincinnati's skyline.  Was Pittsburgh really that much better?  The answer is yes.

I wish I could have found a historic picture of Pittsburgh, when the steel factories were still downtown.  There were shots of downtown, pitch black, and the captions said, "Pittsburgh, 3:00 p.m." or "Noon."  Craziness.


Fun for me:  Pittsburgh still has 2 working inclines.  Cincinnati used to have a few inclines, but they've all been torn down.  I've always been sad that I couldn't see them in action, so I was thrilled to ride the Duschene Incline in Pittsburgh, instead.  This is a great fuzzy picture of the group of us riding the Incline:

I like to think of the shot as "modern" and "edgy."

Our family at the top:

It was, umm, bright.  Further proof of the brightness:

Pittsburgh also, by the way, has more bridges than any other city in the world.  FYI.

I took this picture of downtown Pittsburgh with the Incline in front:

There are about 50 different versions of this exact shot.  Seriously, if you google image Pittsburgh, this shot will be one of the first you'll find.

It's hard to demonstrate how steep the Incline really is.  That hill is STEEP.  There used to be stairs that went from the bottom to the top.  And don't be thinking stairs that went straight up the hill.  There was a historic picture, and those stairs wound all over the place.  Crazy.  I might have walked up those stairs once, but I wouldn't have done it twice.

Oh!  Another REALLY cool thing about downtown Pittsburgh is that where the tip is, 2 rivers come together to form the Ohio.  Did you know that the Ohio River starts in Pittsburgh?  Neither did I.  Here's the 2 rivers coming together:

The two colors stay separate for quite a while.  Not as dramatic as the Amazon's 2 rivers coming together:

But still, very cool.

So, thank you, downtown Pittsburgh, for being gorgeous.  No thank you, Pittsburgh-area roads, for being puke-ish and awful.  And thank you, Aliess, for letting us come visit.

This Close

My brother asked how close Miciah got to the top.  It's not a great picture, but this is how close she got:

So, what, a body length away?  She was just really, really tired by that point.  She'd made it the whole length of the way maybe 10 times, just not all at the same time.

Pittsburgh, PA - Day 1

Some good friends of ours moved to Pittsburgh 2 years ago (3 years ago?  Sheesh), and we told them that we'd visit.  We finally made good on that promise this last weekend.  We're super prompt like that.

A few days before we left, I was reading Calvin and Hobbes and found this strip:

If I lived in Pittsburgh, I would frame that strip and keep it on my wall.

The Trip

The drive wasn't as long as I anticipated, and it was gorgeous.  Trees, hills, and purple wildflowers the whole way.  Our only snafu:  forgetting the cell phone.  Brilliant.  By the time we noticed, we were about an hour out.  We weren't turning back.  Fortunately Aliess isn't a worrier, so she wasn't too freaked out by not hearing from us.  ...  Made me think of the days when we used to routinely travel without cell phones.  Do you remember those days?  ...  You know, 10 years ago.

Day 1 - Children's Festival

On Friday we went to a Children's Festival on or near Carnegie Melon and that other Pittsburgh university's (Pitt?) grounds.  (I didn't know that Andrew Carnegie was from Pittsburgh, though I should have put that together.  His buildings, the library, etc., are GORGEOUS.)  The kids had a great time.  Re-cap in pictures:

They got to pet this dog:

They took pictures with this book character (can you guess who it is?):

It's Junie B. Jones.  Not that you can tell.

They got to do a climbing wall:

Elijah got all the way to the top!:

Here's a perspective on how high up he was:

Elijah was so determined to get to the top.  This shamed Miciah, who gave up about 5 times during her climb.  She decided that she couldn't let her younger brother show her up, so she tried again.  Here she is, looking like Spider-Man:

(That building is cool, right?  It's the Cathedral of Learning.)  But she didn't make it to the top.  Have to post her final Giving Up face:

Classic.

Then the kids got their faces painted.  Elijah, shockingly, wanted a koala bear.  This is what he got:

It looks like a pale Mickey Mouse.  (The picture is so green because they were under a green-roofed tent.)

Teancom loved his dragon.  He spent 5 minutes checking himself out in the mirror:

And Miciah was NOT happy with her butterfly (even though she looks gorgeous in this picture):

Why?  Because this is the butterfly her friend, Elizabeth got:

Disappointing for Miciah, right?  As a consolation prize, I told Miciah that her Aunt Corene could paint her face when we got home.  Corene is talented. When I was a kid she did a dragon on my cheek and then the fire went across the bridge of my nose to the other cheek.

Then we rode the Carousel, ate some lunch, and went back to Aliess' house.  By the end of the day we all were sunned out.  But it was fun.

Day 2 coming up.