It was a hockey night in Pittsburgh...

...sadly, not a baseball night.

Pens prevailed over the Rangers 5-4. Pirates succumbed to the Phillies 5-6. Since everybody and their mother from Pittsburgh was watching hockey, PNC Park had an uncomfortably high number of Philadelphia fans.

But the rain held off, and Mark, Matt, Sloan, Stan and I rode our bikes downtown to the game on the Jail Trail. We met Matt's brother and Peter and Jason from Mark's work down there. The game went late, and there were fireworks after. So all in all, it was a fun time.

Riding home in the dark, we were a dizzying collection of blinking red and white lights. We stopped in Oakland, which I expected to be more empty than it was, since classes are over, but throngs of drunk college students roamed the streets, and we could not even find a bar that was satisfactorily empty. Instead, we got a pizza from Antoons, and sat on the wall across from the Towers dorms and took in the show.

I love riding my bike around at night, especially with a group of people. Even when I got slightly separated from my group, and a woman in a giant SUV cut me off, there was another cyclist right there behind me in a flash, cursing her out. It's like being in a club.

I love Pittsburgh in the spring time - it's been a few years since I've lived here for this season, and I forgot about the sweet and heady smell of lilac that hangs in the air on a humid night.

Definitely eased the tension I was feeling this week over my job.