On my way out west I took an eventful 24 hour stop in Pittsburgh, PA to see the New York Rangers take on the Pittsburgh Penguins.  With less than 5 hours to keep my New Year’s Resolution of resuming weekly blogging for the whole year and less than 5 hours until my midnight train to Chicago to see a green river for Saint Patrick’s Day here is my last 24 hours recapped in (mostly) photo format. Enjoy!

The girlfriend and I boarded the Pennsylvanian in Newark, NJ at 11:19 (ten minutes late, not a great start), which traverses the entire state of Pennsylvania, concluding at 8:05pm (835 pm in our case).  I promptly blamed my girlfriend for Amtrak’s tardiness as the Pennsylvanian has never failed me until this time.  We did see something very cool that I aspire to, but will surely never achieve: attached to the train was a luxury, custom-made train car for one man with a guest.  Apparently if you like trains and have time and a boatload of money you can have your own train car attached to an Amtrak and taken on routes.

When we arrived at our hotel we were greeted by news that the credit card machine was down, so I had to fill out a credit card form like some peasant.  Then we saw a man randomly drop 3 forks while walking through the lobby.  We then got in the elevator with a man who seemed unstable and kept cursing about how his room card was not working to activate the elevator.  We left our hotel for the nearby Capital Grille, a good steakhouse of less use to Catholics on Fridays during Lent.  So I ordered salmon and the portrait of Roberto Clemente staring at me the whole meal was definitely judging me for not having a steak.

I then ordered the Coconut Creme Pie for dessert. I am usually a chocolate cake or cheesecake eater after a meal, but I remembered and told a story about a late friend, David Lee Nelson, who was a comedian and actor I knew for years in NY. He also was one of the few people to reach out to me during the pandemic to congratulate me on my success from a deeply genuine place (i.e. he was pursuing theater in South Carolina so there was no incentive or ulterior motive to his kindness and good cheer). Well before all that and his tragic loss to Cancer he had been a waiter at the Capital Grille near the Chrysler Building in NYC, near the law firm I worked at at the time.  He was not my waiter but he asked to comp me a dessert and he said the coconut creme pie was his favorite. I remember liking it, but after talking about him at dinner with my girlfriend I said, well I have to order it now and my goodness it was one of the best desserts I’ve ever had.

Another funny story about the NYC capital grille was I went in there with a date within a year of David comping me the dessert and the hostess, an attractive and personable woman looked at me while checking in and asked, “are you a comedian? You’re so funny-” and before I could fully look at my date, puff out my (at the time) considerable pecs and say “should we just skip dinner?” the hostess finished, “David Lee Nelson is my brother.” I could not pretend to be a celebrity any longer and simply said “oh wow!” But I was genuinely happy to hear his name and to meet his sister.

Today we went to a pretty terrible breakfast at our hotel (not really the hotel’s fault as the hotel was PACKED with St Patrick’s Day parade visitors and Penguins-Rangers visitors) where most of it was cold.  We then went to the Andy Warhol museum and to the Penguins-Rangers game, so rather than delay dinner tonight any longer, here is the rest of the day in pictures with witty captions.