Goodbye Shadycrest

Well we’ve moved out of our first home together and back to the eastern side of Pennsylvania.

There was a brown boxer that lived across the street from us, who was tied on a 4-foot leash on the tiny concrete stoop in front of his house for what seemed like 24 hours a day.  Even though he had 4 feet of leash, he only ever stood in one spot: directly in front of the door, wanting to be let inside.  Whenever we’d leave the house he would turn his head away from the door to look over at us, and it was the saddest thing.  I so wish we had gotten a photo of him, but I guess this will have to do:

I’m going to miss Pittsburgh a lot.  There is so much to love about that city: it’s cozy and inviting, yet big enough to have lots of separate districts and a real skyline.  The downtown ("dahntahn") area is situated at the meeting-point of 3 big rivers, and on the other sides of the rivers are small mountains, so leaving downtown you often cross a really cool bridge and then go through a really cool tunnel.

That’s what you had to do to get to our house: you crossed the Liberty Bridge and then went through the Liberty Tunnel and then came out on the South Side.  Another awesome thing about where we lived in Beechview was that it was totally residential/suburban: we lived in a nice little neighborhood with trees and a (small) yard and kids who played baseball in the streets, yet it was only a 7-minute drive to downtown.

One thing I’m really going to miss is Molly’s Cheese Sticks from Adrian’s Pizza.  They’re not unlike cheese sticks from other pizza places: basically a 12-inch pizza with some garlic, no sauce, and cut into rectangular strips.  But something about them was different and just perfect.

And I couldn’t believe the letter we got from Verizon the week before we moved out: they are now rolling out their FIOS (sickeningly fast fiber-optic) internet service in Pittsburgh.  Doh!

Of course I’m waxing sentimental here; it wasn’t all rosy out in the ’burgh.  Sure, we lived there during Superbowl XL which the Pittsburgh Steelers won, which was cool... but we also had to put up with insanely obnoxious fans.  The tunnels are really cool, but whenever people approach them, for no good reason they cut their speed in half.  It’s so bad that they actually have to roll out these big blinking construction signs that say "MAINTAIN SPEED THRU TUNNEL."  Pittsburgh is probably the only city in the world where the road signs encourage you to go faster.

Another thing I won’t miss is the rarity of Turkey Hill Iced Tea in Pittsburgh.  You could get it at some Shop ’n Save locations, but no where else, and even there they often failed to store it cold; for anyone who knows anything about real iced tea -- or anyone who can read the label on the container -- you know that if you let it get warm at any point, it goes bad.  But the thing is, it doesn’t go so bad that it’s like rotten milk (unless you let it get warm for a really long time, which I’ve only ever experienced one time); it only goes bad enough that it tastes gross, and if you didn’t normally drink it, you’d just think it was a crappy brand of iced tea.  The bottom line is that the dairy managers at these grocery stores seem to be clueless about this so it’s really hard to find unspoiled Turkey Hill Iced Tea.

And that’s one more thing I won’t miss about Pgh: the crappy grocery stores.  Basically your only choices are Shop ’n Save or Giant Eagle, both of which are pretty sad.  OK, they are getting better, but still sad; nothing like a Wegmans or a Giant.

To close this marathon post, I want to thank everyone who helped in our colossal moving effort.  Rolly flew out to help us load the truck load the truck and to drive the truck across the state; Brian helped with the unloading; Tasha and Dan let us use their basement to store some lots of stuff for a few months; and the parents Allen helped with the unloading, driving the truck for the last leg, and providing a place for us to stay for a while.

No thanks to U-Haul for selling us a reservation for a 19-foot truck, then telling us there is no such thing as a 19-foot U-Haul when we tried to pick it up; for not renting their vans for one-way moves; and for refusing to rent trailers to anyone who drives a Ford Explorer.  Also for just being generally annoying and shady, like claiming that a truck with a 14-foot bed is a 17-foot truck because of the tiny "Mom’s Attic" space above the cab, and then simultaneously referring to the Mom’s Attic as "Extra Space!!1!" in their advertising.