Boneheads Road Trip – October 2009

The wife and I, we like the occasional long drive. We like to take vacations, trips, travel, often at great personal expense and additional hotels requesting that we never return. We’ve decided to take a nice drive and spend a few days in that vacation hot spot Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! That’s right – the city that recently played home to the G20 Summit and is the birthplace of the Big Mac – beautiful Pittsburgh P A!

We really love the reaction of everyone we’ve told that we’re heading to Pittsburgh for a little vacation. Most typically a confused, glassy stare usually followed with something like “What the fuck are you talking about?” I guess not too many people look to Pittsburgh as a vacation destination, at least not for seasoned travelers like The Giddy’s. We’re from New York for chrissakes – we’ve got the greatest city in the world to the left and world class vineyards to the right, why would we leave and take a trip to Pittsburgh?

There’s a veritable plethora of reasons actually, none of which you’re interested in. I’ll share a few that might shed some light though.

1 – Steelers – Chargers – Sunday Night Football. Look, we don’t bleed blue, we bleed BIG BLUE here. Huge lifelong Giants fans (stay tuned for a post on our tailgating hijinks at the Giants-Raiders game on 10/11) but we’ve each always had a “second” team that we followed. Chrissy always liked the Steelers, and for me – the Chargers (yes, because of the uniforms when I was a kid). So this game was a no-brainer. We’ve got club level seats – a little wider to better accommodate my fat ass.

2 – It’s a lovely city. Seriously, Pittsburgh is no longer the heavy industrial city that many perceive it to be. It’s made great strides in redeveloping itself into one of the most livable cities in the nation, and its housing market has remained relatively stable during the current economic shit storm. The river area, lifestyle centers, technology center, oh, and the bridges – it’s really a beautiful city. It’s even been ranked among the cleanest and “greenest” cities in the country.

3 – Junior Miss Giddy needs a ketchup shirt. Yes, we last visited in 2003 for the Rolling Rock Town Fair concert. An all day festival at Heinz Field featuring Blink 182, The Used, Sum 41 and Air Supply. It was when we returned that she realized that she had neglected to purchase a souvenir Heinz ketchup t-shirt. So she’s asked me to secure one for her. Sure, there’s eBay – but where’s the challenge in that? She’s also insisted that we find a restaurant that serves cheeseburgers and tell them that they should make a Roethlisberger. I’m guessing they’ll have one on the room service menu.

4 – We’re trying to get our monies worth out of the Lexus. It’s a lease. The lease is up in less than 6 months and we still have 15,000 miles to reach our limit. We don’t want to leave any on the table. Besides, we figured, with the estimated drive time being seven hours that would be about the longest we could go before looking for an adult beverage.

5 – By getting into town right after the G20 Summit, we figure to avoid much of the paparazzi crush that we normally have to endure.

There’s nothing like a road trip to clear your head. We’re going to try and use the time to organize some of our boneheaded ideas, and perhaps take some stupid photos at various roadside attractions to annoy everyone with on our facebook pages. Hopefully a few bones of wisdom will be uncovered so we can return with a game plan. If not, surely there should be some reckless fodder for more blabber to share with all of you.

Join us for Boneheads Road Trip. Not literally – we really don’t have any extra room in the car.