Saturday in Pittsburgh

I like Pittsburgh. The dirty, dilapidated steel town I was expecting to find certainly existed 30 years ago – but it’s now clean and beautifully regenerated, with new and old comfortably co-existing. It’s compact – hemmed in on all sides by Appalachian hills, it has no choice. In what other city in the USA can you walk from the ball park to the football stadium to the hockey arena? It’s bike-friendly – there are miles of bicycle trails, many of them following the banks of the rivers that converge here: the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Monongahela. And Mr Rogers, an American icon, was born and lived most of his life here.

On the Allegheny

This weekend is a football weekend, and this is most definitely a football town. The Panthers – the Pittsburgh University college team – are playing today, and the Steelers – the NFL team – are playing their season opener tomorrow. I would be going to one of the games if the tickets were not so expensive – literally hundreds of dollars. My hotel is close to both the ball park and the football stadium, and the parking lots started filling up with tailgate parties at 9am. I’m heading in the opposite direction to almost everyone else.

Old and new

My first stop is underneath the Roberto Clemente Bridge – a bridge that I cross every day on my way to work. They rent kayaks for $16 per hour, and I want to see Pittsburgh from water level. It’s been years since I did anything like this, and I was surprised to find that it was my back that gave out first, and not my arms and shoulders! But it was peaceful to meander along the rivers that I have often walked or cycled beside, weaving through gaggles of Canada geese and their young.

After kayaking, I purchased a Powerball ticket from one of the small, typically Asian-owned, convenience stores on my way downtown. It’s a long shot, of course, but you certainly can’t win unless you have a ticket. And from there to Burlington Coat Factory. In spite of the name, they sell much more than coats, and I have a coupon for 20% off that expires tomorrow. I wandered round the store, and eventually settled on a 2.7 quart sauté pan (with ceramic coating!) for $17.99, that will do nicely for cooking the poached salmon with parsley sauce that I plan to cook tomorrow (thank you, James Martin, for the recipe).

Musicians in EQT Plaza

Macy’s, in downtown Pittsburgh, is a bit of an anachronism. Department stores hang on here in the same way they do in the UK – as more of a link with the past, a memory of how things used to be, than as a going concern. This building has been for sale for years, but in today’s economy there are no buyers. And so they soldier on. I ventured up to the fifth floor – there are several more – and found a bookstore that I didn’t know existed. Since this is such a football town, I suspect that this will be the topic of much conversation at work during the coming months. I have a basic understanding of the game, but it’s much more complicated (in both rules and strategy) than UK football (soccer), so I bought a sort-of idiot’s guide to football – at least I hope to be able to follow the conversation, even if I can’t contribute. I’m not a die-hard fan, of course – my allegiances are fickle: when I lived in New Jersey, I supported the Jets (before they moved to New York); in Connecticut, the Patriots; in Texas, the Cowboys; and now, the Steelers. I don’t actually care who wins – what I love to see is a good, evenly matched game.

Book purchased, I made my way to Bar Louie at Station Square. I’ve eaten there before, and I’m looking forward to sitting outside, overlooking the river, sipping a beer while I read my book and wait for my lunch to arrive. Alas, it’s not to be – a charity event means that the place is mobbed. There’s a seat outside, but I could hardly hear myself think, let alone read.

Stonework downtown

Walking back to my hotel, I’m against the flow again – this time, the fans are leaving the game. The Panthers beat Virginia Tech 35 to 17. It’s just the start of the season.

Note added in postscript: I won the lottery! This is the ticket that won me $4!

To Kalamazoo and back

$16.50 is what it cost in tolls to drive clear across Ohio. If you’re from Ohio, that may be a reasonable price to pay to see it in the rear view mirror, although, having now criss-crossed it from east to west, and south to north, I can see it has more good points than bad. The Cincinnati skyline is impressive in such a way that so many cities are not – approaching from the south certainly has the “wow” factor.

16 states so far ...

But, if you want to get to Michigan from Pittsburgh, there’s only one way there – through Ohio. I was going to Michigan with one objective – to add another geocache “souvenir” to my collection. And if you’re going to Michigan, why not go to Kalamazoo, because a place with a name like that just has to be interesting. Doesn’t it? Apparently not. After checking into my hotel, I headed downtown, and parked in the “Mall District”. This is an attractive pedestrianized area, with shops, restaurants, bars, and just one fatal flaw – I arrived there at around 4:30pm on a Saturday, and everything appeared to have closed down at 4pm. I know that times are hard, but it’s a vicious cycle: people don’t come, so you close down early, so even more people don’t come. We have to come up with a way to revitalize our downtown areas, to bring people back to have fun and spend money, otherwise we’re all doomed to online shopping for everything.

Bronson Park

Bronson Park was pretty, but largely colonized by homeless people. Don’t get me wrong – the homeless people have as much right to be there as anyone. The fact that they’re there reflects more on the city’s inability to provide for them than it does on the homeless, who are there out of necessity rather than choice.

But I did find a beautiful mural, so all is not lost.

Kalamazoo mural

Opposite my hotel there was a Cracker Barrel. If you travel about the US at all, you’ll know about Cracker Barrel – basic, country-style food at a reasonable price. Family style dining, down home cooking – it goes by a variety of names, but if what you want is meatloaf, or fried chicken, or chicken fried steak, with a side of mashed potatoes, or green beans, or corn, washed down with sweet tea, then this is exactly the place you’re looking for. Gourmet dining it is not; functional, it most definitely is. Anyway, Cracker Barrel is an old-fashioned country store as well as an old-fashioned country restaurant, and it happens to be one of the few stores that stock Goo-Goo Clusters – an old-fashioned Southern candy which I was eager to try, having heard of a resurgence of interest on the radio recently. You don't need to taste these - if you know that they're made of chocolate, soft toffee and nuts, then, given the name, you already know how decadent they are.

From Kalamazoo, I went south to Indiana, for my second cache. I stopped for gas on the way. To prevent “gas and run”, although you can pay by credit card at the pump, you are required to enter a zip code to verify identity. Since all my credit cards are UK cards, I don’t have a zip code, so I’m accustomed to having to pay before pumping: “$40 on number 10, please”. So I was somewhat taken aback when I looked round for somewhere to pay in advance, and the attendant just said, “Fill up, and then we’ll sort out payment”. I suppose rural communities the world over are more trusting.

Guardian stone

The next cache was at one of the distilleries on the “Kentucky Bourbon Trail” – the Woodford Reserve. It was a “virtual” cache – which means that there is no real cache to find, but rather information about the location that you have to email to the cacher to prove that you have actually been there. In this case, all the information related to a small graveyard attached to the distillery. It had a feature I have never seen before – a “guardian” statue to keep watch over the inhabitants. This is such a lovely idea that I’d like to see more of them.

From Kentucky, I drove back to my hotel – a total journey, for the day, of around 750 miles through 6 states: Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.