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I spent last weekend in Pittsburgh for some Anthrocon Business. The first thing I wanted to mention is that we have some pictures of The Doubletree in Pittsburgh. The full album is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157604208248727/

But this is probably the most important picture, taken directly in front of the entrance to the Doubletree:

After our business in Pittsburgh was concluded, some of us took a sidetrip to Randyland. For those of you who dined in the Orchid Restaurant at the Westin last year and interacted with the rather lively and animated waiter named Randy Gilson, you all know who I'm talking about. For those of you who didn't... well, Randy is a bit of a community hero in Pittsburgh. This is a picture from Page 2 of the phonebook:

Happy fellow, isn't he? :-)

Randy is known for creating what is dubbed "Randyland", a section of homes in a rundown part of Pittsburgh that have been painted all sorts bright interesting colors and designs:

The full album of Randyland pictures can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157604203902962/

Share and enjoy!

I spent the weekend out in Pittsburgh to do inventory of the Anthrocon storage locker. I had originally expected this to take most of Saturday afternoon, it ended up only taking about an hour and a half, thanks to our hard working volunteers: Swift Fox, Silaria, Cadpig, Firefox, and Sinha Lion.

This then left us with the rest of Saturday to spend as we like. We walked around downtown Pittsburgh and visited the art festival that was in town. Afterward, Swift Fox thought it would be a good idea if we uh, "stress tested" some fire equipment. Here's me trying not to get knocked off my feet:

Back at the station, Swift Fox shows us that Firefighters have a sense of humor:

Also, Taz was apparently a new hire in the department:

Later in the evening we went to one of the many observation points on the side of a hill in Pittsburgh and I was able to get some nice night-exposure pictures of downtown Pittsburgh:

On Sunday morning, we visited The Pittsburgh Strip for breakfast. The strip is within a reasonable walk of the Westin, and is not unlike Philadelphia's Italian Market. Since I had less than 4 cups of coffee, I wasn't awake enough to take pictures from there. :-P

I then hopped in my rental car (yay AVIS!) and drove back home.

From my stay there, I gotta say that Aspinwall was a really nice town. It reminded me of Emmaus, PA, a town which I visited frequently in my youth (and was also on the side of a mountain).

The rest of my Pittsburgh at night pictures can be found here and additional pictures of testing the fire equipment can be found here.

Taken from The Westin on Thursday morning.

Crossing the bridge to the DLCC. We made it in one piece.

In case anyfur is curious to just how far Anthrocon's overflow hotel (the Omni William Penn) is from our primary hotel, here is a picture of the walk:

That picture was taken from in front of the Omni William Penn. The over-exposed building two blocks away is the Westin hotel.

We also think that their decorations (seen on the right of the picture) were inspired by 2 Gryphon. That picture is over here.

It would seem that 2 The Ranting Gryphon is included in the decor of the Omni William Penn.

This picture was taken from in front of Anthrocon 2006's overflow hotel, the Omni William Penn. The over-exposed building 2 blocks away is the Westin, our primary hotel.

The walk is slightly longer than from the Adam's Mark to The Holiday Inn, but not unreasonable, IMHO.