Ugh. I did this for you SD fans. And for my school paper, but mostly for you.
I went to Cincinnati Saturday-Sunday. All I have to say is, I'm back in Pittsburgh, thankfully. Never thought you'd hear someone say that did you? Well, I'm going to assume you've never been to Cincinnati. It blows.
I went to cover a football game. I should've known this trip would suck when I was told we were going to leave at 8:45 a.m. The game started at 7:15 p.m. But, one of the guys I was going with is from Cincinnati and wanted to see his family. Fine.
So I get the office around a quarter to nine, the third guy gets there a little later with the car. He tells me the Cincinnati kid is going to be late. Of course. He shows up about 20 minutes late, and we leave.
We get to Cincinnati in about five hours. The drive wasn't too bad. We passed this huge billboard that said, "When you die what are you going to do for eternity?" And then about 600 feet later another huge billboard with the same white font on the all black billboard that said, "Hell is real." On the back of each was five of the Ten Commandments. I'm not sure if any overlapped, although I doubt it. We then talked about what we'd put on billboards if we owned land and wanted to make billboards. Cincinnati guy said he'd put up some hardcore porn. I said I'd purchase the land leading up to that guy's and make one billboard that said, "When you die, what are you going to do for eternity?" And then another one a few hundred feet later that said, "Rot in the ground. And the don't read the next two billboards because that guy is a douche."
We check into the hotel, only for the other reporter (James) tell us we're in room 169. He then laughed. We get into the hotel and he starts reading some information about amenities the hotel offers, one of which is mail packages. "Haha, mail packages. Male packages," he said.
Eventually, Cincinnati guy (Brett) leaves with his dad, who comes to the hotel to pick him up. Now we only have about 5 hours before the game starts. James decides he's going to try to do some work. I watch TV.
Eventually we decide to go eat. We ask the concierge where this pizza place that the hotel brochure told us to eat in is. She says she doesn't know, but that there's an Applebees close by. She tells us to walk, and that it's across the street around behind the building and past some trees. Alright, we walk that way. It's a bit farther than she let on, but we go around a building, walk along train tracks, through some trees and see the Applebees. We walk in, and this about 60 year old women starts hugging us.
"Oh my babies," she said, neglecting to seat us at a table. Well, we're pretty sure she worked there. "My babies are here. How are you children?" Good, thanks. "Good my babies. You just look so good. Come here." She hugs us both. I get an erection.
We sit, eat and pay. On our way out she hugs us again. "Thanks for stopping by my babies. Come back soon. I love you." Thanks, love you too? At one point during the meal, we heard her tell someone she was going to go home after her shift and drink some moonshine. She didn't. She came back to our room, and well, we'll leave it at that.
We leave to go to the game, which is about a 20 minute drive from the hotel. We hit some traffic, then realize we don't know what parking lot our parking pass is for. We drive around for about 15 minutes, pull over and ask a cop who very nicely tells us exactly where to go.
We get to the lot, park and walk to the stadium. We don't see a media entrance, so go to a regular one and ask. The guy working there tells us to just go in there and walk across the stadium to the press box. Okay, that was nice of him. But why wasn't there a separate entrance for media? Or why didn't he just tell us where to go? Either way, that sucked. It's not that I think I'm better than the fans going to the game, I just feel I deserve preferential treatment.
We get the press box, get situated and have about a half hour until the game starts. There's some food in the press box for us media types, but we got there too late and it was mostly gone. All that was left was some pork. As a Jew, no go for me. And I just don't like pork. Oh well, no big deal. Except James had the pork, and it was cold! We blamed that on stupid Cincinnati traffic, stupid Cincinnati not being clear on where to park and stupid Cincinnati not treating us special because we're media members.
The game is played, Pitt loses, we're not happy and it's time to go to the press conference. Except, where is it? We know the room number, but not where the room is. Most of the other writers left with a minutes to go in the game, so we couldn't ask one of them. We ask a cop, after our very successful run-in with a cop earlier in the day. He tells us exactly where to go. It's all the way on the other side of the stadium. Really? That doesn't make sense, but fine. He was sure.
All the common folk (fans) where also heading that way. So it takes us 20 minutes to walk across the stadium, we're late. Except, where is it? We ask more cops and stadium employees. Nobody knows. A cop phones it in, but gets no help. She says she thinks it that a way, pointing the side of the stadium we started on. She tells us to cut across the field. We walk to the other side of the stadium and start asking more people, who all don't know. We see the Pitt players on the team bus. We're fucked.
We finally find it, except nobody is there. We go into the Cincinnati press conference for the last five minutes of it. It ends, everyone leaves and we sit there in silence for two minutes. Defeated.
Sigh.
Now, James was writing the game story, whereas I was writing a column about the game. This means he needs quotes. I could've sent my story in with no quotes and it wouldn't have mattered. But I'm still pretty pissed at this point, but not as pissed as him. He calls our editor, who gives him the cell number for the head of Pitt's media relations. He calls and asks if he can give us any quotes. He can't, because they didn't record any. Damn. We technically have until tomorrow to send our stories in, so I tell him let's just go back to the hotel. We'll watch the news and find some quotes online. The Cincinnati page will put some up. I pulled that out of my ass, but they did, luckily.
We're on our way out of the parking lot when we hit more traffic. Then he remembers he was supposed to file something immediately after the game for them to put up online. He didn't do that. I ask if he wants to park and find a restaurant or something with wi-fi. He does. We pull into a parking lot, he checks and can connect to the Internet from some parking lot. We sit there for a half hour while he files the story. Some guy walks up and asks if we have jumper cables. We say no, although we have no basis for making that claim other than we were in full on fuck Cincinnati mode. I then notice a bus parked in the same parking lot, not moving, and out loud hope it's the bus that is stuck. I don't know if it was.
We go back to the hotel, and start working on our respective stories. I don't know how his is going. He doesn't say much, and then just goes to sleep. Mine is going alright, but I'm tired so I go to sleep. He finishes his in the morning, I don't. Brett meets us at the hotel and we leave. James falls asleep almost as soon as we get in the car. I neglect working on my story. We find a station on the radio playing music from the 90's, and it was amazing. We see a car with a large, black box attached to it. It looks too small to be carrying a horse. He asks what I think it is. I say dead bodies. He says dead babies. I say dead babies stuffed inside dead bodies, as to his the dead babies when he sneaks across the border. We agree it's probably that.
Then we see two deer tied to the back of a truck. That was awesome. James walks up, and we collectively relive the evening. The two of us royally fucked up. Brett took no pictures he liked. We agree it'll be a while before any of us are assigned an away game again. "It was just a complete failure of a trip for all three of us," we say.
I get back to my room, finish my story and send it in. I'm not so sure how it turned out. Within a half hour I get a text from one of my editors.
"We love you."
Well, it was a failure of a trip for two out of three of us. Suckers. And I'm great, unlike Cincinnati, which really only sucks for reasons that we had control over and just fucked up on our own. I'm sure it's a lovely town. But until I go back, fuck that place, and in the words of Drew Carey, "Cleveland rocks!"
I've never been there, but it can't be any worse.