Travelling to New Cities

At about 4:30 Wednesday afternoon, I made a call to a business contact trying to organize a meeting to talk about my racing for 2009. He said he would be in the office all day Thursday, but wouldn’t be in the office for two weeks after today. Therefore anytime I wanted to drop by today would fine. The only problem was that ‘dropping by’ meant flying from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh and to get there I flew via Chicago O’Hare on a red eye. After getting to Chicago, I grabbed a quick breakfast jumped on my next flight and promptly went back to sleep. As we came into land in Pittsburgh, I looked out the window to be greeted with the view of a white winter wonder land. With all the travel I do for the racing, I don’t often have the chance to say I have never been to a city before. This was one of those rare cities that I had yet to come across in my travels. And I was reminded why I love traveling. The view that greeted me as the cab came out of the Fort Pitt tunnel was astounding. It was snowing lightly and downtown Pittsburgh lie spread out before me. Heinz Field, home of the 2009 Super Bowl Champion Steelers, was just off to my left and the downtown high rises towered over me on my right. After my meeting, I had the cab take me up to the overlook on Mount Washington to take some pictures from my phone. The elevation only served to impress me more with the city, its beautiful steel bridges and surrounding countryside. When I have been to new places for racing in the past, I have taken the experience for granted. Not anymore! I will be taking time to ‘stop and smell the roses’ from now on- in familiar cities just as much as in new cities.