Day 11: Tennis

We had our 1st off day in the last week today, so we decided to spend the day back at my old stomping grounds, Glen Creek Tennis Club. Ben and I hit for about an hour and a half on the clay in the morning, including playing a set that I won 7-5, must be the home court advantage. We are now 1 set apiece on our trip. Later in the afternoon we moved inside to hit for another hour, and Ben won the tie-breakers we played in there. I guess it makes sense, I beat Ben outdoors on clay, and he beats me on indoor hard courts, go figure.

For lunch today, we grabbed Subway again. For those investors out there, it might not be a bad idea to pick up some Subway stock. I realize that insider information is not supposed to be used in trading, but 2 young men will be visiting these chains on a somewhat daily basis over the next month or so.

For dinner, my coach, Mark Pemu, invited us over to his house to grill chicken and steak. The meal was excellent, despite Mark admitting that he, "wasn't sure what he was doing," while cooking on the grill. Also special thanks to Mark's wife, Kath, for helping to prepare the food. Afterwards, we just relaxed at Mark's house, along with Hank and Jackie, watching the Tennis Channel and sharing stories from the past. I certainly had a lot of good memories at "The Crick," and it was great to see everyone while I was in town.



Ben's car crossed the 20,000 mile barrier today. The driving part of the trip has been relatively good so far, but as you can see from our itinerary, we really have not made it to the real long drives that will be taking place later on in the adventure.

For those of you living in downtown Pittsburgh that are in the car market, do not buy a stick-shift, stick to an automatic. We got ourselves into a bit of a pickle when Ben attempted to parallel park his car in between 2 others, going back up a very steep hill. After coming extremely close to hitting the other vehicles, we decided it would be a better idea to just park an extra block away that had no other cars that would be in danger.

Here are the statistical updates:
1-end of day odometer: 20,014
2-miles traveled today: 31
3-miles traveled total: 3,371
4-states traveled in today: Pennsylvania
bonus stat: The Grant Building downtown, has a red light on top of it that flashes the word "Pittsburgh" in morse code.