Just home from West Virginia, where my wife's family gather at her
grandmother's house to celebrate Thanksgiving. The traditional turkey feast
was pleasant as always, but the real culinary high point of this trip was on
the way home...
The closest major airport is Pittsburgh, we had a couple of extra hours on
Saturday before our flight, and Karen and I are both graduates of
CMU. So
we decided to detour into Pittsburgh and and drive around a bit to see how
things had changed over the years and what was still familiar.
The biggest visible differences to us were on the river fronts, from
the new stadium that replaced Three Rivers to what looks like a technology
park built along the Monongahela under the parkway, where steel mills
once stood. We didn't take time to do more than drive around the CMU
perimeter, but even that let us see that the campus landscape has changed
dramatically since we were students. Otherwise, most of the major landmarks
that matter to us remain unchanged, including the apartment on South Millvale
I lived in for all but my freshman years at CMU.
But best of all,
'the O'
was still alive and well on Forbes avenue! I'm sure I ate there an average
of at least once a week from the time Steve Fisher introduced me to the place
until I moved to Colorado. I often tell people that the best part of having
to travel a lot for work is that I get to sample interesting foods from around
the world... and many of my strongest travel memories are of meals enjoyed
with interesting people and wonderful food. However, despite all those
experiences, 'O' fries continue to rank near the very top of my list of foods
I'm willing to go out of my way for. Even my 5-year-old son, who can be a lot
pickier about what he'll eat than I like to admit, thanked me repeatedly
on the flights home the rest of the afternoon for "making me try those french
fries with cheese".
Sometime, I'd love to spend enough time in Pittsburgh to see how many of the
other places I used to love to eat are still around... In the meantime, a
regular fix of chili dogs and fries at the 'O' are one of the few things I
really miss about the years I spent in Pittsburgh.
[[!tag tags/travel]]