Pittsburgh, the Steel City

The ride into Pittsburgh was pretty long and I sort of had an off day on the bike. Nonetheless, I made it successfully. However, there was a point when we were in two tight lines trying to safely get the entire team through a narrow, one lane construction zone. There was a transition onto some fresh pavement that caused a parallel lip and when Winston tried to merge over it he wrecked very hard. Luckily he only suffered minor scrapes, the jersey barrier caught him, and the rest of the team avoided a "pelaton pile up". Once in Pittsburgh we grabbed some lunch at Qdoba and headed for the Holiday Inn. Later we celebrated Andrew Abbott's bday with a dinner at a Brazilian steak house. They feed you endless amounts of meat, 14 different types, and it is all cut directly onto your plate at the table. It was awesome and we all ate a ton of food! All in all the day was pretty light on programming but tomorrow would be much different.

We started our day off in Pittsburgh with a friendship visit and lunch with the UCP, a city Cerebral Palsy organization. We were hanging out at their center and ate some pizza with them. Above is the guy I talked with the entire time. His name is Vince and it was pretty amazing getting to talk with him along with the other two guys there, Wes and DJ. He had no motor skills and would use the wand on his head to type letters on his keyboard to make words and sentences. It was truly amazing to see his level of intelligence released through a computer. Although I would ask a 10 second question and he would take 10 minutes to type an answer, they were all complete sentences with high levels of intelligence. I could sense frustration on his part with the board but was fascinated to be able to catch a glimpse of who he was and what was going on inside his malfunctioning body. Quite the experience! The leader of the organization also awarded us with their annual Humanitarian Award normally given to a community member. What an honor that was. For the afternoon we were treated to free tickets at Kennywood Park. This amusement park was very historic, one of the first in the country, but was quite weak compared to Cedar Point just days ago. Apparently Cedar Point is THE best one in the nation!