Weekend tour to WV and Pittsburg

Last weekend I managed to find some time out of my usual busy schedule to go to West Virginia and Pittsburg with about a dozen of friends from the ML account. Some where my own friends, some my friend’s friend and some my friend’s friend’s friend. But it was a nice tour with so many new friends or rather I should say chain of friends. I drove down to Bhanu’s place (Yes, Bhanu was there in this tour, so you can obviously expect some fun and some adventure ;) will tell you about the adventure part later) and from there fourteen of us started on three different rental cars and headed straight for our Hotel already booked Glens Dale – WV.
Don’t wanna say much about whether the Motel was good or not – but the receptionist was definitely good ;) and so our boys then had no problem with the shabbiness of the room or the room service. Few tried there best but all they could manage was just her name that sounded something like Kareena.
After dropping our luggage at the motel we went in search of food for the “Pet Puja” and stopped by the Pizza Hut. Again since we had a mixed breed of Vegetarian and Non- Vegetarian in the group, there was some confusion with the orders which could be attributed to either the girl’s (girl who was taking the order) true ignorance towards veggie food or she had encountered the pure veggie breed for the first time but she definitely looked a bit shocked seeing such big group of ALL BOYS. And then Pronobesh confused her further by his order of “Buffalo Chicken”, I had to correct him that if he means “Buffalo Wings” by this?
After our sumptuous meal we went to see the “Palace of Gold”, the Iskon Temple on the hills of Moundsville – WV. It was a beautiful temple and the scenic beauty surrounding it was just awesome. Few amongst us fealt blessed hearing the Gyan on Krishna’s consciousness and about Chaitnya Mahaprabhu and his spiritualisms, but some chose to stand out and smoke their chimney. From there we went ahead to see the “Green Miles”, the place were the prisoners were executed. This is one of the old Green Miles Prison of East Coast, Featured in MTV fear. People have gone through different Supernatural Experiences here. But we were not so lucky and found that we are a bit too early for the season to begin. But what has season got to do with this, I wondered? Is it something like the ghosts come back and occupy there cells to beat the chill of the season and stay there till it is spring/summer? Anyway we were told that it would open for visitors after a week and so we all had to return back to our motel without experiencing anything supernatural.
The next day we started for “Laurel Caverns”, the undeveloped passages in Pennsylvania's largest caverns, to explore a 430-acre geological park with 2.8 miles of Underground Passages, catacombs, and native sculptures. But since we fell short of time we had to restrict ourselves to just a one hour tour.
After exploring the year old caves we proceeded towards the Pittsburg downtown to experience some mad driving. Yes you read it correctly; it was some Insane Driving by all the three cars, not because of the lack of driving experience but because of some misguided directions and one-ways and other stuffs. We wanted to go to the Golden Triangle – the point where the three rivers meet, but could never reach there and mistakenly (or I can say correctly, because it was on our list) we reached Mt. Washington. Climbing the Mt. Washington requires some real driving skills, because the streets are not only narrow but also steep and sharp turnings.
It was already around 8 PM when we headed back for NJ, we had to cover some 350 odd miles (with few breaks off course for food and fag), and since we had office the next morning, we targeted to reach NJ latest by 2 AM. This means we have to cover the entire distance in not more than 5 hrs. This left us with no option than to drive at an average speed of about 75-80 miles/hour. So the mad drivers buckled up their seat belts and no matter what the god may shower, Rain, Hail or Storm, we won’t slow down. The night driving at 80 MPH with heavy rainfall on I-76 East was the real driving test and was never ever experienced before by me. At end it was all safe driving with all fourteen returning safely to their destinations. Also not to mention I certified on the skill of following a Car without losing it’s track even for a sec, during this entire tour :-D