I try not to get too personal in my columns, but I've got some news I need to share. I have a new crush, a big crush in fact, on a little town I like to call Pittsburgh, PA. We only spent a weekend together but I totally Facebooked Pittsburgh when I got home and we have a ton of mutual friends and common interests so I definitely think it could work. Let me guide you through my weekend of personal revelry and sporting embarrassment.
Day 1 -- The Glory Begins
Eleven other Wahoos and I pile into three cars and head to the steel city. Along with three of my closest and most tone-deaf friends, I proceed to scream along to standard road trip tunes for the next six hours. The peak of the drive is without a question our rousing rendition of U2's "With or Without You." We butcher every note, we laugh, we are awesome, yet somehow the least cool people on the planet. Since I am not driving, we arrive in Pittsburgh in what I deem good time. The unenviable task of actually tracking down the apartment in which we are residing is ahead of us. We are staying with my buddy Drew's high school friends and we're not exactly sure where they live. As we drive down windy roads for a few minutes somebody jumps out of an alley, points at me and yells "Virginia?!" I nod, we park -- we had arrived. We meet, we greet and a best-of-31 U.Va. versus Pitt flip cup match later (we won), we are in a sandwich shop that I demanded we go to because I saw something about it on the Food Network. The sandwich is decent at best, the waitresses are rude, the cook is yelling at us and we are being harassed by everybody because some of us are wearing orange. I am strangely enamored by all of this. Pittsburgh and I are still flirting at this stage and I'm pretty sure I like it. I spend the night in a hammock that somebody actually sleeps in every night. This amazes me and I ponder how this is possible as Day 1 draws to a close.
Quote of Day 1:
"You're not talking, you're yelling. You're yelling about football and you're pissing me off so shut up before I kick you out of here."
-- Sandwich Shop Cook
Day 2 -- Largest Pizza Ever
So it's a good thing I didn't come to this school for the sports. Day 2 is 21 hours of joy, and three hours of U. Va. Football-induced hell. I'm just going to skip right to the night and bypass painful occurrences. We return to the apartment and decide to hit the town. Night 2 consisted of many people, many beverages and much fun. On the way back to the apartment things get interesting. My friend Kevin and I separate from the group and go on a pilgrimage to the local pizza joint. We purchase a standard large pizza for five dollars and eat it on the way back to the apartment. This was the very last reasonable thing we did the rest of the night.
About a half block from the apartment we see another pizza place and decide it would be a good idea to get some pizza for tomorrow. It seemed reasonable at the time; it was not. Kevin walks up to the counter and demands the largest pizza they sell. This is a grave mistake. The clerk points to the wall at a cardboard box that appears to have contained a refrigerator at some points in its existence. This is no refrigerator box. This is the box for their largest pizza, the aptly named "King Kong."
Somehow the fact that this box takes up an entire wall of the restaurant does not faze us. We pay $25 for a pizza we don't even eat, and it is worth every penny. The pizza takes about two hours to make, and I become well-acquainted with a Willy Nelson look-alike who explains to me the process of making homemade dynamite. Our pizza is finally ready and we manage to get the monstrosity up to the apartment, where everybody is in awe of its magnificence. After much ado, everybody passes out in a different corner of the pizza box. There is plenty of room for everybody.
Quote of Day 2
"Oh crap, go unlock the second door."
-- Pizza guy, telling his coworker to open the second of twin doors because the "King Kong" is too wide for a normal door. No joke. Too wide for a normal door.
Day 3 -- Home sweet home.
We wake up and the pizza is every bit as large as we remembered. We say our goodbyes and leave Pittsburgh as early as possible. We debate strapping the pizza to the top of the car like a prize buck. We decide it might not be such a great idea. Six hours and more singing later we return to Charlottesville with headaches and a weekend full of good memories.
Eric's column runs bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached at ast@cavalierdaily.com.
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