Slushstone Memories

[ornoth]

I write a lot of blog articles, but only about half of them ever get posted. Every so often I have to clean out my “drafts” folder, and sometimes I find an oldie but goodie that really should have been shared.

Such is the case with this puppy. Six years ago, when we were still living in Western Pennsylvania, the following map sparked a wee leetle rant:

This is a map of Pittsburgh. The green dots represent areas where the land slopes at greater than a 25 percent grade. You’d look at terrain like that and say, “Basically, that's a cliff.” Looking at the map, you might wonder why there aren’t any mountain goats native to Western Pennsylvania. You wanna know why? It’s ’cos they’re fucking scared of these hills!

If you don’t live in Pittsburgh, your city prolly doesn’t have many – if any – slopes above 25%. At 15%, people wonder if their car can make it up, or whether it’ll be able to stop at the bottom going down. But in Pittsburgh, they build roads on 15% grades. And 25%. And 30%! And 35%!!! Then they plunk whole neighborhoods down right at the edge of that precipice.

It’d be one thing if Pittsburgh’s geology was nice, stable granite like New England, or limestone like Texas. Nope. Pittsburgh’s built on something called “slushstone”. Every time it rains, some hillside somewhere in the city decides it can’t hill anymore, embarks upon a brand new career path as mud, and slides down into the nearest valley, usually taking a major road and a number of houses with it.

Believe it! There’s a neighborhood here called “The Bluff”. You know why it’s called “The Bluff”? Because it’s just one big 300-foot cliff face. What do Pittsburghers do? Cantilever no less than six separate levels of two-lane highways hanging in mid-air off the side of the cliff, stacked one on top of the other! And just for good measure, they built a big hospital and a major university right on top of the cliff. What could possibly go wrong?

Now, if you think Pittsburghers are stupid for building houses and roads on the side of an unstable cliff, consider the alternative: building houses and roads in the valleys directly underneath those slushstone cliffs. When the slushslides come, that might not be such a bright idea, either.

In fact, living in Pittsburgh is kinda stupid, like living near the top of an active volcano... Except that a volcano might not explode for twenty, forty, or a couple hundred years, whereas Pittsburgh has landslides every time it rains. And – I shit you not! – Pittsburgh actually has more rainy days per year than Seattle!

Notice those all-white flat areas on the map, right next to Pittsburgh’s famous three rivers? Those are obv the easiest ways to get around town, and as such they’re filled to bursting with railroad lines and superhighways. Good thing Pittsburgh’s rivers never flood! Oh, wait…

With highways and railroads leaving no room for cyclists on the flats, if you’re gonna bike around here, there’s only one direction you can go: up! They really missed an opportunity when they gave the city “Benigno Numine” as a motto; it really should be “Excelsior”, because no matter where you are or where you hope to go, it’s guaranteed to require an arduous climb… or five.

The whole package is enough to make me wanna hang up my bike and buy a pedal boat. Except even the rivers here are also just liquefied slushstone, liberally mixed with industrial waste and sprinkled with sunken coal barges, rail cars, and aircraft.