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Sunday, April 06, 2008

Petroleum Hike (March 2008)


It's been a little while... It was Saturday and we headed towards the Oil Creek State Park with Jeff (driving) and Noam. After a two-hour drive (I was half-asleep all the time so I'm not really sure about the time) we got to the oil area and, after going through Oil City, we got to Petroleum Center where our hike started. I was a little surprised when I saw all the snow there. Analyzing the situation, I soon became quite comfortable with the fact that it's going to be a very wet hike (I didn't mind during the hike, but later, I did...). So we started and walked and saw a well from time to time, a pipe... fake wells... not-fake pipes and used-to-be houses and even less fake graveyards (two, to be exact - one was really small, the second was bigger, both in the middle of the woods... I remember myself thinking "now, that's the real ghost town").
So Petroleum... From what I found out, it was one of the town established during the oil boom in the area. It managed to attract thousands of people in a few week. When there wasn't much oil left, all the people left as quickly as they came and all that was left (how many lefts am I going to use in this sentence? :)) was what I've already said we saw. Not much... But honestly - would you like to live in a town called Petroleum? I certainly wouldn't. :)

It wasn't either Africa or the Rockies... or anything that is really beautiful and offers plenty of photographic opportunities. :) It was, nevertheless, interesting to see it. Also - it was interesting to go through Oil City and think that that is the real ghost town although people do live there (it definitely looked like a ghost town to me... but then - Pittsburgh looked a little like a ghost town, too, when we got back from NYC :)).

Probably the most exciting thing happened on our way back when we heard a weird sound from under Jeff's car and then tha car started behaving weird and then Jeff stopped. And we could see there's something wrong with the car as there was something hanging down from somewhere (I found the situation rather amusing, although my feet were freezing in my wet shoes :), because I was there, with three CMU PhD students, some of the best brains, and none of them could do anything :)). So Jeff called AAA, they said they would come in an hour, but they couldn't take more than two people (nobody seemed concerned about this). Many a cary passed, some slowed down to look at us (and laugh? I mean - you don't want to help, why do you do that? :)), some didn't care at all... I do want to believe that people in the Czech Republic still stop to help others in emeergencies :)). Anyway, after an hour, one car actually stopped. This made our inability to do anything even funnier. The driver was a woman. A middle-aged man with a beard and a bear left the car and asked us what's wrong (he added several f-words and such :)). So we told him. Hi lay down, looked at it and said that it's just oxygen something and that we can go that it's safe. Then he asked us if we didn't see a hitchhiker there (we did, but about an hour ago), looked amused (probably thinking how useless we were :)) and left. And we got back into the car and left that place, whatever it was, in a rather loud car which, nevertheless, took us back to Pittsburgh safely. And that's the end of the story.
Wait - it isn't! We were also supposed to go to a performance downtown, somewhere, that night, which we, of course, didn't make (but Pan said it wasn't good anyway... :)).

If you want to see some pictures, just click here:

Petroleum Hike (03/2008)

1 comments:

Toulonnaise for a while said...

konecne nejake poctenicko.
love the picture with the fotak.
pa pa besos

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