An Adventure in Pittsburgh

Yesterday for work, I needed to go to a 7pm meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, having to do with permitting for a particular site we're doing a project at for Sunoco. I didn't really think I needed to be there, but the project manager from Sunoco wanted me there so I went.

After finding out yesterday morning when I called the township that the meeting had been moved from 7:30pm to 7:00, I started out from work a little after 1pm (had to stay and play cards, and almost won the first game of 2010 but got beat on the last hand!).  It was snowy, but the roads were fine.  I was using the GPS on my phone and listening to my audio book (The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, also on my phone) and just cruising along.

Hours go by, pretty uneventful except some heavy traffic around Akron (even though it shouldn't have been rush hour yet) and a whole bunch of snow flying around.  The roads were good the whole way.  About an hour outside of where I needed to go in Pittsburgh, I'm cruising along listening to the audio book and running the GPS, when I hear a *POP* and a buzzing noise out of my car speakers (I had my phone plugged into the car's auxiliary jack).  I look down, and the phone screen is black. I try turning it on, briefly get the Motorola logo, then black.  It had been plugged into the charger the whole time, and the phone gave no indication that the battery was getting low or anything.  I kept it on the charger and gave it a break, but the little light that comes on when it's plugged in wasn't on.  It was completely dead.  Even removing the battery etc was not enough to revive it.

Fortunately, I had printed out paper directions that morning just in case!  My directions were to the Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant downtown (about 5 miles away from the township's office where I was going) since I had hoped to eat there, but with traffic slowdowns due to snow I didn't get there until 5:45 so I didn't think I'd have time, plus I wanted to figure out if I could revive my cell phone.  So here I am, driving around downtown Pittsburgh at rush hour with no phone and no GPS, just paper directions - fortunately it was light enough yet that I could read them!  After nixing the Spaghetti Warehouse idea, I followed the directions to the township office, hoping that I could find the 3 things I needed in that area: (1) a gas station, (2) dinner, and (3) a Verizon store.

I went through a residential-ish area to get to the township office, and then decided to continue down that road a bit to see what I could find.  Sure enough, a mile down the road there were 3 gas stations at the same intersection - check off #1!  One of the gas stations had a restaurant inside it - check off #2!  I had a meatball sub for dinner, and noticed a small strip mall across the way.  I had a little time before the meeting so I stopped by, and lo and behold - a Verizon store!!  But, when I got closer I saw that they had signed up that they had moved to a different location.  I went in a bread store down the way and asked where they moved too, and it was just another mile or so down that same road.  By then I needed to get back to the township office, so I mentally noted where to go and would stop by there after the meeting.

Going to the meeting was interesting, because I knew the project manager from Sunoco would be there, but I had no idea what he looked like as I had only corresponded with him via phone and emails!  I was wearing my coat with my work logo on it so I hoped he'd find me.  I sat down near the guy I thought was most likely him, and turns out it was.  We chatted a bit about the project, I gave him some of the stuff I had brought for him, and that sort of thing.  The meeting went well and they did approve our project, after the Sunoco guy presented our case.  I guess he wanted me there in case they asked us questions about the permitting process or something, I don't know.  I didn't say anything during the course of the meeting.  The only contention that occurred was with an old guy who owns residential property across the street.  Apparently he has a lot of houses there that he rents out and is planning to build some hi-rise condos or something, and he was ticked off that these new tanks on Sunoco's property would supposedly lower his property values and cause people to not want to live in his new housing thing.  He also got all upset about existing stuff at the terminal, which the guy presiding over the meeting said was not applicable to this project (since it isn't) so that wasn't an issue for tonight, but he still had some conversation with the Sunoco guy outside the meeting.  He said he'll be appealing the ok for the project, but we'll see.

So after the meeting, I went off looking for that Verizon store.  I found it, went in, talked to the guy, and he said it sounded like something that could be fixed under warranty, but they're not a "true" Verizon store just an authorized reseller, so they couldn't help me.  He gave me directions to the closest "real" Verizon store which was at Pittsburgh Mills (which turned out to be a mall) about 9 miles north of there.  I got there and it turns out that place is a huge mall!  I assumed the store would be in the mall but I had no idea where.  So I just picked a random entrance, went in, looked at the directory, then looked up - and there was the Verizon store!

It turns out my battery was completely and totally dead.  Apparently the GPS uses more battery power than the car charger can put back, so after using it for so long it just went dead.  And the car charger apparently can't revive a completely dead battery.  So they charged the phone briefly for me there, and then I took it out to my car and plugged it in and sure enough it continued charging!  But, I needed to use the GPS to get me back to the interstate, so I did, and lo and behold it died again... before I got where I knew where I was!  I found my way though, and just drove on for a while.  Once I got to Ohio, I stopped at a rest area and took my regular wall charging cord in with me - fortunately I had brought it, just in case!  I ended up finding an outlet in the womens bathroom, so I stood there by the sink charging it for a little while.  After I took it back out to my car, it charged just fine.  I remembered all the directions from when I drove there earlier so I didn't use the GPS all the way home and just "read" more of my audio book.

Overall it was a fairly eventful trip, but I made it!  The drive home was a lot snowier than the drive there, but for most of it was able to keep up a decent speed.  I had left Pittsburgh Mills a little before 9pm, and pulled in our driveway at home around 1:30am.  I had a stop in there at a Speedway station to clean off all the road salt from my windows and get a Pepsi and a 3 Musketeers bar, which totally gave me an awesome second wind for the rest of the trip home.  I was very awake for the whole drive, but did get to sleep pretty quickly after getting home.  I slept in until 8:45 this morning, and then went to Summit... which will be my next blog post. :)