19 July 2004

Road trip to a happy doomsday

I'm wrapping up my baseball trip, spending the night at my sister's home near St. Louis.  My nephew and I drove here today from Pittsburgh.

I really enjoyed visiting Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, cities I had never been to before, and would consider living there someday (especially Pittsburgh).  Both places have new ballparks, and while we liked Great American in Cincy, PNC Park in Pittsburgh is the best of the "new" parks that I have seen in person so far.  I'm a sucker for tradition, so I can't say that PNC places higher than Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, but the Pirates play in a great modern stadium.  We will go back to Pittsburgh.

I have to pass on two short things we encountered on our trip: first, as we pulled into Cincinnati I was scanning the FM radio dial and came across an advertisement for a show coming on the station at 88.3 that billed itself as playing the "finest in science fiction folk music."  We kept it on long enough to hear a folk song (lots of acoustic guitar and a "happy" feeling about it) about the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs (yes, I know it was an asteroid, but the song called it a comment) and how they might have survived if they had heeded the warnings of an astronomically learned tortoise.  I am not making this up.  For the rest of our lives, my nephew and I will bond over these lines:

"There's a comet hurtling out of the sky/And when it hits we're all gonna die!"

"There'll be nowhere to run, no time to be a hero/and only the roaches will survive ground zero"

The next day, as we were driving towards Columbus on our way to Pennsylvania, I noticed a van in the right lane in front of us that continually swerved onto the shoulder.  As I nervously passed this van, I saw that the reason the driver kept swerving was due to the fact that he was trying to play a guitar as he was driving. 

I could not see his mouth moving, so I can only assume he was not singing about dinosaur-killing comets.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've lived in the 'Burgh for almost 20 years. It's pretty cool---small enough to get around, friendly, lots of cool neighborhoods and history. I'm a country girl at heart, but I have to say I like Pittsburgh:)