Pennsylvania - October

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

I got home from another work trip to Pennsylvania. I was told i would be gone around 4 or 5 days...i was gone for 10 days. It started with the usual 24 hour notice, we left Michigan around 6pm and didn't arrive at the hotel until 2am. Then the first day working we had the boxes for our GPS equipment stolen by a little old lady. We set it up in the right of way in a field in front of her house. After talking with her and telling her that if they find natural gas or oil on her property she might be getting paid thousands of dollars per month, she gave us back our boxes.

Also we had 2 run-ins with the cops. Once because a man didn't want anyone on his property. He didn't own the mineral rights and after a little talk everything was ok. The second time was when we got back to our motel. I don't know what the guy did but he got a ticket and they towed away his car.

For the first part of the trip we were working just east of downtown Pittsburgh and on one day that it rained we actually went downtown to look around and have dinner. It was great. We saw the city then walked along Carson street which reminded me of Wrigleyville in downtown Chicago. That street had tons of cool little stores and bars.

The second part of the trip was in Lock Haven, PA. There's not a whole lot there and out of the 3 restaurants, only 1 was open past 8pm. For this part of the trip we had to survey up in the mountains which was really cool. The bad thing is that the GPS doesn't work well up there and then it started raining and snowing. One day actually set a record low for the high temperature, the high was 38 degrees. I hadn't really planed on it snowing so i basically wore every piece of clothing i brought. The fall tree color was great but after 10 days in the wet snow we were all ready to come home.

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Pennsylvania

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

After leaving New York we headed to Pennsylvania for 3 days.
ya ya more horses

One cool thing was that as i was walking i kept finding wild strawberries and blackberries. They were great when it was almost noon and i hadn't eaten lunch yet.
This is where you send your son if you want him to hate you.
I almost stepped on this salamander, he was scurrying around by the side of the road.

I had to do a double take when i first saw the sign
We drove by here, Gay's Hardware was actually a super busy place

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Worst Motel Ever

Usually while out of town we stay at some pretty nice hotels. But as we left New York and drove to Pennsylvania we hadn't booked a room and the place we ended up staying on July 3rd was here. Looks ok right?
Wrong. This was the worst motel i ever stayed in. We stopped working around 8pm so there was nowhere else in town to go. In the parking lot was this toad. If he could have talked i know he would have warned us to not go in
Notice the lack of headboard and the light bulb just hanging from the ceiling but at least there was a car air freshener hanging on the wall.
My bed only had one sheet on it at first. So i went to the front desk and asked the owner for an extra sheet. The owner was from India and there was a bit of a language barrier. After a five minute conversation he finally said "ohh bed sheet, yes yes" and gave me two new ones. I say new ones but one of them had this miscellaneous stain on it. I ended up not using the bloody sheet he gave me. At least i think it was blood...
Oh and the walls were covered in some kids scribbling with a crayon.

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