When I got in to Pittsburgh I took a quick power nap, ate the first real food in two days, and took off for a Pirates’ game. This was my first visit to the Pirates new stadium, PNC Park. It’s not really new, I just haven’t gone to a game in a while.
The stadium is really nice and we had really good tickets thanks to my little brother and his work. The Phillies were quickly dealt with by the Pirates and fun was had by all (except for the Phillies fans). Afterwards there was a concert on the field. The band was some hickish country rock band that had me running after one song. There were also
fireworks so we went out onto one of the bridges to watch them out of earshot of the horrible country music. While watching the fireworks I quickly realized something, the fireworks we have in Pittsburgh for no apparent reason after a 
game are better than Provo has for it’s bug 4th of July celebration. I’m not exaggerating, my brother-in-law who is from Provo had to agree. It has to do with the fact that Provo is weak sauce and people think the fireworks are good but they’ve never seen any other ones and the Zambelli family is considered the First Family of Fireworks. Their shows are always awesome.
Fireworks Pics: The statue in the one picture is Roberto Clemente I took the other pictures while standing on the Ninth Street Bridge (aka the Andy Warhol Bridge) looking at the Roberto Clemente Bridge.
I will preface this story with another reminder that flying for free on standby is not for the faint of heart. Everyone always asks for hook ups (as if I could actually do something) for free flying but they don’t realize how it works. Here is how I got to Pittsburgh:
I left my house at 5:30 Thursday, August 16th to head to SLC with my brother-in-law Ian. First we tried for a jetBlue flight to San Francisco where we would connect to a JFK flight. Then we tried to go straight to JFK. Neither worked out so we crashed on a couch up in Salt Lake for four hours then got up at five to start trying again.
We got on a 6:45 flight that was delayed and went to Long Beach, CA. From Long Beach we turned and got on a flight to JFK. En route we were delayed by Air Traffic Control and had to do a few loops and barrel rolls to kill time. While we were passing over Lake Erie we learned that there was very bad weather in NYC but now we didn’t have enough fuel to just loiter around till the weather got better so we landed in Syracuse, NY. I asked if I could get off since my parents happen to be in nearby Palmyra, NY. Since we weren’t at a gate they said no. If we could have, our adventures could have ended there. But alas, they continued.
We refueled quickly and flew the remaining one hour to JFK. When we landed there was lightning all over the place so the ramp was closed. When the ramp is closed no one can come out and bring the plane in so we sat on the ramp for a while longer till the lightning stopped and finally we got off the plane.
Next we tried getting some flights to Pittsburgh. It was now probably around six in the evening and because of all of the delays there were two flights left to try for. Those two flights, however, kept getting pushed back more and more until finally a little before midnight they canceled the flight we were trying for. When that happened I knew there would definitely be no open seats on the last flight for us standbys. We weighed our options and decided to try for a nine hour bus ride on greyhound to get to Pittsburgh.
We got on the subway and went to the bus station and got there around two in the morning. We had to get some cash out and buy our tickets and then sat around till our bus left at 3:30. Unfortunately, when the bus left, we were still sitting in the station. Apparently when you by a bus ticket it’s kinda like a lotto ticket, and we lost. The greyhound customer service was closed so they didn’t really care that about fifty people were left behind and we were given no explanation. We ended up sticking around till the 6:00am bus and got on. On that bus ride I was able to add Philadelphia and Harrisburg onto my trip. Nine miserable hours later Ian and I arrived in Pittsburgh around 3:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, August 19th.
When I got in to Pittsburgh I took a quick power nap, ate the first real food in two days, and took off for a Pirates’ game. This was my first visit to the Pirates new stadium, PNC Park. It’s not really new, I just haven’t gone to a game in a while.
The stadium is really nice and we had really good tickets thanks to my little brother and his work. The Phillies were quickly dealt with by the Pirates and fun was had by all (except for the Phillies fans). Afterwards there was a concert on the field. The band was some hickish country rock band that had me running after one song. There were also
fireworks so we went out onto one of the bridges to watch them out of earshot of the horrible country music. While watching the fireworks I quickly realized something, the fireworks we have in Pittsburgh for no apparent reason after a 
game are better than Provo has for it’s bug 4th of July celebration. I’m not exaggerating, my brother-in-law who is from Provo had to agree. It has to do with the fact that Provo is weak sauce and people think the fireworks are good but they’ve never seen any other ones and the Zambelli family is considered the First Family of Fireworks. Their shows are always awesome.
