I realize I have ignored this place for months now. I would offer an apology for that, but this page on my schedule , not yours so no apology will be forthcoming. In fact, what I am about to write about happened like a month or so ago, that is how current I am being with this entry. Te hnically I still have about a third of a vacation entry still in draft status and considering vacation was in December this entry will be current by comparison.
So time to grab Peabody and Sherman and hit the Wayback Machine again. Shortly after my promotion at work (I am technically titled Crew Lead at the gas station, but given I work overnights by myself, that would be a crew of one I am leading) I realized my new overnight schedule would leave me with Sundays off at both jobs. Yes, now at least every week I will have one day off both places. This particular weekend, weekstart was doubly nice though, I was going to be off both jobs on Monday as well.
With that type of respite, I figured I might as well go do something cool Sunday afternoon/evening. I had worked both jobs on Saturday, so by the time I had gotten off at 7am Sunday, I was ready for a nice long nap. It turns out it was too long of a nap, but the weather was still kind of nice, so I shook off my daily malaise and decided to make something with what remained of Sunday. I had a free movie pass for the Waterfront (yay, Coke caps come through again), so I walked up my street to Forbes Ave to catch the 61D, which goes right to the Waterfront. It was like 8 o'clock or so, by the time I caught the next regularly scheduled bus and got to the theater it was maybe 9ish. The game plan was to catch "Shazam", but by the time I got there just one showing was left, a 10pm showing in 3D. As people who know me know, I hate 3D movies, it is like putting on dorky glasses to see something that looks like it is straight out of a Fischer Price Viewmaster. So I quickly peruse the remaining movies and "Hotel Mumbai" had a showing at like 10:20, another movie that I wanted to see after seeing trailers online. I wasn't all kinds of comic book geeked out for it as I was "Shazam", but hey, I'm here, it's here and best of all, it's free. With an extra almost hour and a half to kill before the movie, taking in the wholesome goodness of a Primanti's sandwich seemed like a good plan.
So I get my belly good and full (so I am not ordering overpriced theater snacks) and i get back to the theater around showtime. I settle in and am pkeasantly surprised how good the movie turns out to be. It would be one of the best I have seen this year, if I did and end of year recap of such things, but then Hollywood luminaries would be asking for statues and shit. That would be followed by a bunch of winners having too long acceptance speeches and I don't want to be up till three am covering an awards ceremony for awards I created, so there will be no "best of 2019" list on this blog. The run time of the movie was a bit long, I did not realize this going in, but it checked in around 2 hours and 20 minutes. So when i get out of the theater I walk to the adjacent bus stop, where I wait for about 20 minutes and no bus. I am thinking the movie ran longer than the bus schedule, so I walk across the Waterfront over to Giant Eagle so if there are any late buses left I can possibly catch one to at least Sq Hill. I wait there maybe another 15 minutes or so before I decide nothing is going to come, but I have one last bus I can try to catch, I can walk up to 8th Avenue and try for a 61C, which I know runs late. I get to that bus stop, and wait what feels like an appropriate amount of time before deciding that no bus is going to be forthcoming, I am better off just walking home. Now I have made this walk in the past, during the day I have taken the trail along the river from Oakland to the Waterfront, and it is one of my favorite bike rides when I have the bicycle out of mothballs. Just a hop down the hill, across the Hot Metal Bridge, and catch the trail at the South Side Works. But this was late at night, and to my knowledge the trail isn't lit. Not that I am afraid of the dark, but a dark wooded trail with my nighttime eyesight (nonexistent) and walking home that way would be problematic. There was another option, I knew 8th Avenue eventually ran into East Carson Street in West Homestead (west siiiiiide, holla). Of course i came to this realization after walking halfway back to the trail, so I split the difference and walked 7th Avenue instead. It has to run parallel to 8th Avenue, right? And so it does, until it doesn't as it runs into 8th Avenue in West Homestead (west siiiide, holla), at which point I decided I could just walk 8th Avenue the rest of the way. And that plan worked until I got to the Glenwood Bridge interchange, then at some point I got all discombobulated, my lack of sense of
direction mixed with my non existent night vision put me on the wrong path. Where I was walking was still flat, or at least felt flat, so I assume the river was just beyond the woods to my right. I even saw signs say certain areas were Hays and Baldwin, i remember seeing similar signs walking along the trail as those boroughs are responsible for certain portions of the trail, so I keep walking. And walking. And walking. I am not seeing any familiar landmarks on the horizon. I see a big hill off to the right, I assume that is the other side of the river. Maybe Greenfield or Hazelwoid or something. Finall
