An Eventful Weekend...

I began my "weekend" Thursday at 3 a.m. My dad decided to invite me to go with him on one of his trips to PA to check out some sort of coal processing plant, train a new guy with safety procedures, and calibrate a methane detector. All in all, we spent more time being tourists than we did anything else.



I had the chance to go to the infamous United Flight 93 crash site (the PA field from September 11)....



This was very sad. I was shocked that the plans to build a REAL memorial will not be put into place until next year. It won't open until the 10 year anniversary of September 11th? I'm upset with the government, since they haven't really done much to get the ball rolling regarding buying the property and making a national monument out of it. It shouldn't have taken 10 years to get a memorial up for the people that sacrificed their lives to keep the plane from making it to Washington D.C. While the memorial there is nice, it sickens me that heroes of such stature have only a "temporary" memorial for people to pay their respects.


Yep. That plane was headed straight for the capitol building in D.C. In particular, the terrorists managed to plan out the flights around the schedules of many of the members of congress, etc., most of which were at the capitol building on September 11th. The passengers of flight 93 actually planned on taking over the plane above a rural field to prevent more deaths, at which they were successful. Such a patriotic sacrifice.





Here's the field. The little white dot is an American flag. The trees on the edge have yet to grow back...




Here's the temporary memorial site.









A nice shot of "Old Glory".






Here's a Pennsylvanian farm...








A clean-coal preparation plant... Dad is the safety manager for a construction company that gets contracted out to build plants like this, among other things.

and...... the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium...


As for Pittsburgh, we just drove through, but it was neat getting to see all those shiny buildings. Skyscrapers are rare for me.




After all of this fun, we went to another site in Morgantown, I sat there for 3 hours while Dad talked to a few "higher up" people in the company, then we commenced to driving ALL of the way back to Beckley. UGH. It was a LONG drive, but at least we stopped at the waffle hut in Flatwoods. It was a beautiful evening back in WV.







Next was sleep. Lots of sleep.



The next day, I went to Richwood. On the way, I stopped at the Fayette Co. magistrate's office to pay some on my traffic violation. $40 down, and $129 to go!




That afternoon and evening, I went fishing with Dad, and sat around the campfire and visited with my cousins.





Here's the river that runs by the cabin. I just HAD to do a black and white shot. The fisherman adds a nice touch... He's my neighbor at the cabin :)

The next day, I woke up at 6:30 and ventured out with Dad to the Cranberry Wilderness. The trail I was on was motor-vehicle-prohibited, so we rode bikes. Dad fished quite a bit, but only caught two. I put about 20 miles on that bike...uphill half of the way...Ironically, my legs are not sore, but my arms are. I guess the Glenville hill and steps are more beneficial than I originally thought.

Saturday ended with a trip up to Glenville to play dinner music and sing the Alma Mater at the GSC Athletic Hall of Fame banquet. The most hilarious part was when all of the tone-deaf athletes tried to sing along...YAY, a gig that pays! Ugh... a gig that pays towards a fine and not something fun, like a passport so I can go to Canada.

Now it's over... That was a really long and eventful weekend. I'm wore out in a good way. :)