The One With The Trip To Pittsburgh To See Matt & Rachel

NOTE: This is a joint-entry written by Melissa, Rachel & Matt

Melissa arrived at Matt's place at 6pm on Friday, after driving for 5 hours to Pittsburgh. Earlier in the day while Matt had been frantically cleaning in preparation for the women's arrival, a 93-year old woman who lived in the apartment upstairs had flooded her bathroom and caused a minor rain squall in his bedroom. Fortunately, none of it had hit his bed that Melissa and Rachel would be using that weekend, and by the time they arrived the landlord had already brought in a cleaning crew to fix up the carpet, and so his emergency plan to get them a nearby hotel room proved unnecessary.

Upon Melissa's arrival, the Friends marathon began nearly immediately, just as they had discussed doing many times. They had time for about 3 episodes (the first three) before it was time to go pick Rachel up from the airport. After an unintended detour, they made it to the airport just as Rachel was arriving. After the greetings and hugs, we made our way to Red Lobster in Monroeville for a very late-night (11:30ish) dinner, as Rachel entertained Matt and Melissa with stories of the girl sitting next to her who had three jack and cokes on the flight.

Following the terrific dinner and great conversation, we drove back to Matt's place. Matt gave Rachel the .25-cent tour of his apartment, which he disparagingly referred to as his "old man's bachelor pad," given the almost total lack of color and cheap uncomfortable furniture. It was decided he needed to be Queer Eye�d.

Melissa went to bed almost immediately, while Matt and Rachel stayed up until about 2 am talking. Finally, Rachel decided that she too was tired, and went to join Melissa in Matt's bed. Matt settled down on the living room couch, and Day 1 came to a close.

Matt awoke sometime around 9:30am on Saturday to find that Rachel had decided (due to Melissa�s notsnoring) to sleep on the air mattress that Melissa had thoughtfully decided to bring, just in case Matt's fears that his full-size mattress would not be large enough for both girls to sleep on comfortably. Matt decided to sit on the couch and read a book while he waited for the girls to awaken from their slumber, and they eventually did so around noon.

After a bit, Matt had decided to take them to the Waterfront, because he thought they would enjoy the shops and the food, but also because that was still one of the few destinations in Pittsburgh that he knew how to find reliably, or at least semi-reliably. They enjoyed lunch at a brew pub known as Rock Bottom, then ventured to Cold Stone Creamery to enjoy the mixins. Then they wandered the shops a bit.

Before departing, it was decided that Matt should do some clothes shopping with Melissa and Rachel acting as fashion consultants. Several fashionable and handsome outfits were tried on. A pair of pants and a few t-shirts were chosen. Matt bought himself the pants and Melissa generously decided to buy Matt's new shirts as a very early Christmas present/"thank you for letting us stay here" kind of thing, over his objections.

The group decided to return home for a quick Friends episode before departing for the baseball game. It turned out to be a very quick rest, before we went back into Pittsburgh for the Pirates vs. Mets game. We found PNC Park easily enough but parking was another story. After driving around quite slowly thru what turned out to be the overcrowded theatre district for about half an hour, we finally found an open parking lot right next to the stadium for $15, and we went for it. Getting tickets ended up being problematic though; only standing room tickets were left. We passed on those and decided to do a walk around the park, at least seeing it, and maybe finding some scalpers.

Finally scalpers found us. We were approached by one man with two tickets in one section and one in another. We were debating that when another man came by with three seats together. "Don't hoard in on my business," said the first and pushed the second man away. But as we wanted three seats together we went to the second guy, who looked a lot like Andre 3000. He asked for slightly below face value, but since the tickets were $135 each and it was already in the 2nd inning, we declined. "But the seats come with free food!" We haggled and haggled, and they kept reducing the price until finally Rachel agreed to $30 each. The scalpers kept trying to get Matt to give them additional money, but eventually Rachel and Melissa pulled him away. We finally scored seats to the sold out game!

Upon entering, we each received a limited-edition bobblehead of Jack Wilson. Then we walked around the entire stadium, up a few stairs, and down a lot of stairs to get to our seats. We found ourselves three rows from homeplate on the first base side, with a nice view into the Mets dugout. After a few minutes, a woman came to take our orders. Apparently these seats came not only with free food and non-alcoholic drinks, but with waitress service. So sandwiches, cracker jacks, peanuts, popcorn, cookies and sodas all came flying to us from the aisle. It was crazy. (Even more so because we were seemingly mere moments away from bagging the whole idea, but we ended up being waited on right behind home plate. You never can tell how your luck will change!)

The game was entertaining, as was calling friends and family to tell them about our seats. Amy managed to explain why the game was sold out: if the Mets won, they would clinch the division. But they didn't win! Big hit in the 9th for the Pirates. Yay home team!

We returned to the house full of food, where Matt and Rachel proceeded to eat their leftovers anyway. Then the group watched Grosse Pointe Blank, which Matt had promised Rach would be a 90-minute movie, but she was disappointed to find it was 107 minutes. She lived, however. Rachel then went to bed and Matt and Melissa followed after another episode of Friends.

In the morning, we all woke up, late as usual, and headed to a diner for breakfast. Then we returned to pack up Melissa for the ride home. We sadly parted ways agreeing to meet again soon.

Total miles flown: 1,200
Total miles driven: 625
# Friends episodes watched: 13
# Restaurants visited: 3
Visiting with good friends: priceless

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