Today it's Pittsburgh...

06/02/2009

I left The Farm this morning and drove 154 miles west to the ‘Burgh.  The drive from Beautiful Downtown Berkeley Springs, West Virginia is an easy one.  It is just a hop, skip and a jump up route 522 to I-70.  I-70 heading west becomes I-76 at Stanton, PA, and from there it is a stone’s through.  It is one of the prettiest drives you could want to make, and I just love it anytime I get to make it.  The route goes through the mountains of western Pennsylvania, and this is one of the best times of the year, other than fall, to make it.  The drive is therapeutic.

At this very moment I am sitting in my room on the 17th floor of the Hilton Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh.  The view outside my window is 180 degrees of my view from my family room at The Farm.  There I see flowing fields and gracious mountains.  Here I see people peregrinating the streets of Pittsburgh while monsters of concrete and brick and glass protect them from ever having to see the bucolic countryside.  This is a nice place to visit, as the saying goes, but I’ll be damned if I would ever live here.  I suppose not many of those little beings walking around seventeen floors down would trade places with me to live near a town with a population of just 711 permanent souls.  They probably think me just as crazy to live on a farm in West Virginia as I do of them living in this hustle and bustle, crime-ridden venue.  But then again, we do not have micro-breweries in Beautiful Downtown Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, population 711.

And that is all I have to say about that…