Tomorrow

Sorry for the lack of updates.  I will write a big huge post with pictures and many many words while Amanda is driving tomorrow.  I’ll hopefully be able to post it tomorrow evening.

Until then:

Pittsburgh Is Gloom

The GPS my parents got me last Christmas (thanks to Judy, Paul and Jesus), for  use on this very road trip, gives the user the option between finding the shortest route with respect to time, and the shortest route with respect to distance.  Since this car is leased and we have a finite amount of miles to use before handing it in, we are using the latter option.  Because of this, the GPS plots routes that take us through all kinds of strange places and roads that I can pretty much guarantee that you will never, ever, for any reason, drive on.  It’s kind of fun.

Yesterday, around lunch time, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch along one of these strange routes through nowhere in particular:

Two things about the sign:

1. Pretty bold claim about the Home Cookin’ on it.

2. I still don’t know what Ham Loaf is.  I wish I ordered it to find out, but Amanda and I decided to order something else that we had never seen on a menu before: Chicken Pretzels. 

When we saw this, our imaginations immediately, and obviously, roused up images of a chicken finger wrapped in a pretzel, or a pretzel stuffed chicken finger.  Or something that combines a pretzel and chicken.  Maybe a deep fried chicken tender with pretzel batter?  We were intrigued enough to order it, like I said.  Here’s what we got:

Chicken tenders shaped like pretzels.  Duh.  Of course that’s what Chicken Pretzels would be.  We are dumb.

In any event, we ate the crap out of them, along with a turkey club sandwich (boring) a salad of mostly spinach (gross) and corn fritters covered in powdered sugar (gross for me, good for Amanda):

The meal was passable if not a little bad (cold fries) and again, Amanda liked the fritters.  She has bad taste in food, as they were basically fried creamed corn, which is just implausibly disgusting.  I used to think that you could fry anything and cover it in powdered sugar and it would turn out delicious, but I was proven wrong.  Thanks The New Fort Restaurant.  Deep fried creamed corn is foul.  It’s a fact.

After lunch, Amanda wanted to try some diner pie.  This place had it. 

It was also passable, but not great as lemon meringue pie (as another flavor of pie, it was disgusting).  Please note, however, the enormous coffee mug that housed Amanda’s coffee .  Here it is up against her face:

*Inside Joke Alert* – Get me some goddamned coffee!

After lunch, we had a long and winding trip through some back roads on our way to Pittsburgh, where Amanda’s friend Lauren lives. We had some time to kill during the trip, as Lauren wouldn’t be back in Pittsburgh until 8ish, so we made a few stops at things we found mildly to very interesting.

The first stop was at one of those fun (not much fun) scenic view pull offs.  Here’s the view from Mount Ararat in the Allegheny Mountains: Elevation 2464 feet.

Ho hum.  of interest at this stop, however, was the guard rail that hopefully keeps out of control cars from flying off if the cliff.  The thing was covered in weird sayings and other tags:

The saying pictured said something like, “Here’s to never growing old, to plans without reason and blah blah blah.” Some nonsense.

After the quick stretch at the side of the road, the next interesting sight was a crazy cemetery.  It was huge and full of decaying corpses being gross underground:

It was actually quite a nice place.

The next thing that caught our eyes was a weird beach thing.  It was a big pit that they apparently fill with water during the summer.  It was about the size of a football field and in the middle of nowhere.  It made for an uninteresting picture, as it is currently full of leaves and garbage.  Of interest however, is this:

I am sorry that you have to look at my exposed nipple and not Amanda’s instead.

An hour or so later, we were finally in Pittsburgh.  We were about an hour and a half early, so we parked the car at Lauren’s apartment building and set out to walk around the area.  Lauren lives right next to a few universities (Carnegie Mellon and The University of Pittsburgh), so we didn’t really see downtown at all, but the sights around were good enough.  For instance, a block from her apartment building:

It is exactly what it looks like: A puppeteer dinosaur in a sport coat and sneakers outside of a completely unmarked office building.  This is one of the best ways to eat children I think.  were I a dinosaur with a taste for kids, I might steal this strategy for sure.

I know that some cities are fairly lenient with their homeless population and in some cases, a little more loose with the drug stuff that goes on, but Pittsburgh takes the crown:

I have no joke.

After walking around for an hour or so, we sat around for little longer waiting for Lauren.  She finally arrived and we headed out for dinner (finally):

We talked and ate, like normal folks do, and I snuck a few peeks at the television playing the Jets/Dolphins game, as normal fellows do.  I also ate some pretty good chili:

Very sharp cheese on top and perfectly salted tortilla chips to complement the slight heat of the chili itself.  Not bad at all.  The two women with me order boring salads because they are women.

Now, at this point in the trip, you may want to ask me, “Ryan, who on earth is taking these pictures of you and your wife/friends when you are at restaurants? If everyone involved is featured in the picture, who is snapping the photograph?  Do you have a floating camera or something?  A drone?  Maybe you’re paying someone to follow you around and take these things?”

Nope.  You’re way off, and probably a little slow.  Last night, our waiter/waitress took this picture.  Our waiter/waitress also, as far as we could surmise, takes estrogen on a regular basis.  He/she looked like a girl, on the beefier side of being a female, but not humongous and had a strange voice, but not too strange.  He/she also, as I caught a little later in the dining experience, the remnants of an underbeard.  Awesome.

According to Lauren, the restaurant is in a pretty peculiar part of town.  I use peculiar because it is a synonym of the word ‘queer’.  It is not Ok in today’s society to call someone “queer”, but from what I can tell, “peculiar” hasn’t reached that level of societal venom yet.  You may use i in your everyday lexicon.  You have my permission.

We got up this morning, cancelled all walking around plans because it is raining, had an OK bagel and are now driving through Ohio.  Until next time…

Hello Philadelphia

We sat in a lot of traffic heading into the big city. It was completely worth it. Why? Because Penang was on the horizon. Penang, or as I like to call it, “Pe-DANG that Essord is delicious”, is an incredible Malaysian restaurant about a block from where I lived for a few years. It’s right inside these hilarious gates:

I used to live right outside of Chinatown. Literally, seventeen steps outside of it. Somehow, I made it through those few years without getting hit by a car or doing early morning calisthenics.

At any rate, I parked the car in slow moving accident-town and Amanda and I headed to 10th and Cherry to meet up with a couple of friends, Greg and Mary Lugones. They were late. Crap. We waited outside of the restaurant and got hungrier and hungrier:

When they finally rolled up, we went inside and ate some extra super mega delicious food. First up, Appetizers. Roti Canai:

Basically, it’s a delicious chewy/crispy pancake from India that you slather in incredible curry sauce.

After that, Chicken Satay:

Chicken on a skewer with peanut sauce. Also delicious.

Finally, the main courses.

1. Pad Thai:

2. Nasi Lemak (I think):

3. Chicken Curry:

4. The greatest thing Asia has ever done, ever. Beef Rendang. DANG:

Holy crapoli, it’s super delicious. It looks like a pile of dog food on a banana leaf, but it is, in fact, the second best tasting thing ever (the best thing ever, is further down).

Despite their lateness, we enjoyed the dinner with Greg and Mary:

After dinner, we headed onto Route 76 and sat there for awhile, as 76 is the worst road in the world. We finally made it to my friend Dan’s house, in Conshohocken, PA and were greeted by a nice note on the door:

After ridding the neighborhood of said drifters, we went to bed. On couches.

After an OK night’s sleep, Amanda and I took the train back into Philadelphia and hopped off of it at 15th and Market. What’s at 15th and Market? This:

Reading Terminal Market. It’s basically an old railway terminal that is now a giant food distributer. Inside, there are tens of different places to eat, from fruit stands to cheese steaks to sandwiches to etc. See?

Above are two pictures. I could have taken/posted about 30 of them. The place is huge. Since I lived about 13 steps from this place also (I should be much fatter than I am), I along with Amanda, knew exactly where to go. The Dutch weirdo breakfast place:

After ordering and lugging our food back to some plastic tables, we got down to business. Breakfast sandwich for me, eggs, bacon, toast and a big blueberry pancake for Amanda:

Super great food from the Pennsylvania Dutch folks. They hate them some technology, but they love serving them some extra fresh (straight from their farms hours away) food. It’s home-made cheese, fresh eggs and bacon, squeezed orange juice (which is meh for me) in not so fresh styrofoam. Also, they think cameras take their souls in photos. Weirdoes.

Jealous?

Once we finished up, and more importantly, wiped the grease from our hands using roughly 37 napkins, we headed out into the city.

One of my favorite things about Philadelphia is the random street performers. I have two favorites: the first is this crazy bucket drummer who calls himself '”Pots and Pans”. He’s really very good at banging on everything but pots and or pans.

The second performer changes year to year. They’re elementary school kids who play on their schools drum line. Basically, it’s ten or so kids with huge drums strapped to their chest who are really good at drumming. Luckily, today, we saw a troop of kids marching down Market Street. I filmed the heck out of them:

Once I had handed over about 10 dollars in singles into their small white money collecting bucket, Amanda and I started walking to world famous Love Park and then to Rittenhouse Square.

After the show, we headed to world famous LOVE Park. On the way? A fantastic Christian band at City Hall:

Three singers. All tone deaf. I wonder if their god dislikes flat singing as much as human people. I bet it does. That essowrd is grating.

After a quick stop in LOVE Park and photographing the over-photographed statue there…

…we headed into Macy’s. yes, Macy’s. The department store. Amanda wanted to get a rain coat for the trip. It turned out to not be terrible, because I was reminded that the Macy’s near City Hall not only sells clothing, but also houses a pretty great gothic looking pipe organ:

That’s inside of a department store. Providence really sucks.

After the Macy’s organist performance (yes, they pay a person to play the thing), we headed for a rest stop in Rittenhouse Square. We watched 300 rich women take laps pushing their 600 dollar strollers around. Rich people love Rittenhouse Square. So do I.

Once we were sick of sitting on hard wooden benches and making fun of people looking for a place to do yoga in public, we headed to the best museum ever:

There is no picture taking allowed in the museum, so I will describe it as best as I can: It’s basically a two story room filled with medical oddities. Conjoined twin fetuses in formaldehyde, old medical implements, a six foot long colon, three pound urinary tract stones, etc. It is awesome. Read all about it here.

Needless to say, looking at hilarious midget skeletons and babies in jars makes one pretty hungry. We walked the 20 blocks to the greatest place ever:

Philadelphia is known for cheesesteaks. I have eaten hundreds of them from tens of restaurants in the city. Abner’s Cheesesteaks, in University City, is easily the best Cheesesteak in the city/country. The irony is, in the basement of the same building is the worst strip club in the history of history, recoded or otherwise:

Amanda, Dan and I fought the urge to go watch the JV team in the basement and headed into Abner’s. Yum:

The steak is from Australia, the cheese is from America and the bread is freshly baked. It is just the most perfect meal I can think of.

I ate one and a half, along with some fries and two orange sodas. This is what you have to beat every other restaurant in America. The above is the bar. Good luck Memphis Bar-B-Que, LA Fish Tacos, Arizona Tex-Mex and everyone else.

I really do love those damn things. Holy crap.

Once everyone was satiated, we did the tourist thing and had someone snap a picture:

What a bunch of lame-o’s.

After that, our time in Philadelphia was pretty much finished. We headed back to Dan’s apartment and sat around. Another mediocre nights sleep and today we’re off to Pittsburgh for the night.

Once we leave Pittsburgh, the real trip starts. We won’t know anyone at all until we hit northern Nevada. It’s going to probably be better than a lot of other thing I can think of. Most involve working.

Lastly, and finally, Providence has minimal homeless folks, so Philadelphia crushes Rhode Island in the weirdo homeless folks department. Case in point:

So Long New Jersey

I know I promised a new post yesterday. I am a jerk.

As I explained in that last post, we stayed at Amanda’s sister’s family’s house.

*Aside*: I love when I get to use multiple possessive words in a row. I try to get long strings of them together in my spare time. I am not joking. *Aside Over*

After a day of not much of anything (lunch with Amanda’s completely insane family elders), diner rolled around. Mother Effword taco night Beeword.

Note: Instead of typing a swear word on this blog, I will use a replacement word in red text.

I ate six of them. once finished, it was time for what i think was Matt’s (Amanda’s nephew) eight or ninth birthday candle blowing:

Success.

Once finished up, we settled in for a game night. The game of choice? Bezzerwizzer. It’s basically a trivia game. It’s a pretty good one. I say that not only because it was a pretty fun game, but also because Amanda and I killed everyone in it twice in a row. This was taken before everyone realized that it was no use even playing against us:

We win.

Oh, and it was also a fun game because it brought out Amanda’s oft hidden (and frequently denied) competitive side. She basically freaked out and knocked everything over in a fit of competitive excitement.

After the games, we went to bed. I once again slept in a bed made for a female child. It was great. No it wasn’t. What is great, however, is once again waking up to some hilarious DVD led exercises. Everyone hates them. This is part of the Ab Ripper. Ridiculous:

Once everyone had finished torturing themselves on purpose, we finally got around to canceling out all of that exercise at a local diner:

While it looks like most other diners, I was slightly dismayed to learn that this may, in fact, be the last one of its kind. If the sign isn’t lying to us (and really when do signs actually lie?) this is the final diner we will, um, dine in, during our trip. What a bummer.

Apparently, in order to enjoy greasy mounds of breakfast and pie, we need to swing by Latin America or Canada on our trip, as this is apparently the last one in America. Crap.

Disappointment aside, I ordered some food and ate the hell out of it:

It was standard diner fare. No surprises, other than the size of the sausage links.

Directly after breakfast, we headed to a little slice of heaven. For Matt’s birthday (which I mentioned above), we went to a warehouse filled with inflatable obstacles. Basically, a bunch of bouncy castles, slides, climbing walls and etc to play in for an hour or so. I removed my shoes and entered the playground under the guise of helping the much smaller and less athletic Matthew and Jake (his brother) climb things. Really, I just wanted to jump around and slide down things. here I am keeping my cover as a helper:

And here I am abandoning the guise as soon as possible:

As you can see, these places were not made for folks who can’t fit in a twin bed for children, but somehow I soldiered on:

After a little while, Amanda and her sister Emily decided to get in on the “helping” with a weird toboggan style slide technique:

They both really enjoyed it:

If there’s one thing in life I’ve learned, it’s that the the person who had the most fun is likely the person with the most injuries when the fun is over. If that is the case, then I killed everyone at having fun. How can one possible get injured in a warehouse full of inflatables? Mat burn. It is all over me. Here’s the first one I got (which looks much worse/better now):

I also got one on each elbow, one on my ankle bone an a slight burn on my adam’s apple. I am not joking. Head first is dangerous

After that, we packed up, said our goodbyes and headed to Amanda’s friend’s house.

We were molested by their puppy and took the tour. We chatted a bit and headed to Philadelphia.

End of New Jersey. Until a few weeks from now when we’re back in New Jersey.