A week ago I returned from a long adventure with Mr. James Murray. Together we logged 2,553 miles in just under 46 hours. I had the iPod on shuffle the top most played artists were, in order: The Legendary Pink Dots, Depeche Mode, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Stereolab and The Flaming Lips.
Our trip took us from Trenton to overnight stays in Syracuse, NY; Cleveland, OH; Chicago, IL; Louisville, KY and Pittsburgh, PA before returning home. In our travels we made stops in Buffalo, NY; South Bend, IN; Munster, IN; Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH.
For those who already have seen my Facebook photo album then you have an idea of what we did. This blog entry will give you a more detailed rundown of our journey.
The highlight of the trip (other than spending time with the truly adorable Ashley) was the after game fireworks and concert at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. When we arrived in Pittsburgh we had seen that the Pirates were in town. As it turned out the game had been sold out for months ahead of time. As luck had it they released some tickets just as we got there and were lucky enough to score a pair. The reason it was sold out was their “skyblast” post game fireworks and concert. 4 games a year are given the concert and fireworks treatment. Earlier concerts this year featured Huey Lewis & the News and 38 Special. The concert we saw was by Train and they were excellent. The fireworks were even better. Fireworks were shot from the field, the scoreboard, the banks of the river behind us, the bridge crossing the river, even buildings on the other side of the river! Here’s some video I took, it only shows a small portion of what went down:
Another hi-light included the St. Anthony’s Chapel in Pittsburgh. The chapel is home to over 5,000 religious relics. I’m not a religious person but I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the church as well as the collection. It is the largest public display of relics in the world and second largest collection of relics next to the Vatican. The history of the church is incredible and a long time parishioner gave the tour. No photography was allowed inside the chapel but I did purchase the book about the chapel in the gift shop.
We went to some excellent eateries as well. I used the TV Food Maps app and all of the places we dined at had been on either the Travel Channel or Food Network or both! A bunch of the places have been on many different shows. We had a ton of great meals. We can’t decide which place is a favorite so we have a 2 way tie for first. Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, NY and Schmidt’s Sausage Haus in Columbus, OH are our clear winners. They are both quite different from each other and are both spectacular. Both places had a long wait to be seated. Dinosaur BBQ had more of a biker crowd. The moment the doors opened you are greeted with this spectacular smoky BBQ smell, so instantly your mouth waters. The best ribs i’ve ever had. Great beer menu too. If you ever find yourself in Syracuse then you must go there. Schmidt’s Sausage Haus had a more family friendly environment. A live music duo of a man with an accordion and a man with a tuba play German music and them and the staff are all dressed in Bavarian garb. The sausages are out of this world and the cream puff is monstrous. Great service, great prices too. Well worth the hour wait.
I definitely will be visiting Chicago as much as I can (to see the sweet Ashes) so I will report with all the other awesome adventures that I plan on having.
Ryan Newman started on the pole at New Hampshire International Speedway by setting a new track record, he lead the most laps and had just enough fuel to win the race. Way to go #39 Ryan Newman and what a great way to represent the US Army!
With the temperatures soaring into the 90’s this week I decided to cool off in my neighbor’s pool. As I stepped into the pool I noticed something floating on the far end. I got out to take a closer look and found this guy:
As I fished him out of the pool I was surprised by how heavy he was and how little he actually smelled. He still had the skunk smell but nothing like what I would have imagined. After double bagging him I washed up and went back in the pool. No skunk is going to ruin my day!
A buddy of mine gave me this picture from 1944 of his wife as a child. The picture was missing pieces and what was there was in extremely poor condition. I cleaned the picture up and rebuilt what was missing. I also saw that the original location in the picture had paint chipped off all over the steps so I repainted the steps. I hope (s)he likes it.
Testing the blog and RSS feed. I noticed that images weren’t displayed properly when importing my blog into other sites nor when viewing in the RSS feed. Then I noticed that links in the RSS feed weren’t working properly, not viewing images and getting an error when clicking on the article link. Hopefully this will fix it. I’ve embedded an image in this article to ensure that it is posting properly.
A good buddy of mine makes some of the most delicious homemade pies. I wanted to create a logo for his pies that would really stand out. I’ve been inspired by industrial labels that are usually found on machines or machine parts. I think they are beautiful and often overlooked but when they are used in a different context then I think people are immediately drawn to them. In the case of my buddies pies, the taste alone isn’t enough to bring notice too, mainly because it is such a huge market and there is so much competition, hopefully this logo will draw more attention to how great his pies are. What do you think of the logos?
Last week I had switched hosts for my website. If you link to my site or subscribe to the RSS feed update everything to point to www.beckinabox.com. Today I finally got around to fixing the “Photo Albums” section and added a bunch of photo albums, in case you didn’t see them on Facebook. The blog is much easier to update now as well, something that really prevented me from making frequent posts. Some more minor changes and tweaks will coming in the next few weeks.