New experiences

Two noteworthy parts of my Pittsburgh experiences so far: the driving culture and stink bugs.

Driving
In Pittsburgh, folks here are not shy about honking and giving you the much offended-look. One woman was so offended my driving clueless-ness that she drove behind me and up into the gas station in order to cut around me. I inadvertently didn't allow her to merge into my lane. But before she completely cut around me, she stopped her car along side mine, scrolled her window down, and yelled at me.

The other odd thing about driving here pertains to making left-hand turns. It seems that it is common practice here for drivers to cut into the lane of the on-coming traffic as you make the turn. The schematic on the right shows what I mean. The blue arrow indicates the path of the turning car. Notice how the path cuts into the lane of the red car. In Pittsburgh, this is absolutely NORMAL! In fact, the city draws in the lines for folks in the red car lane to stop at about 20 feet from the intersection, a good chunk of the way behind the cars that would be in the green car's lane. Even with that consideration, cars will regularly cut into the red car lane.

I do not make this up. Look at the picture I got from Google maps. The SUV is crossing the intersection. Notice the car waiting for the light is way in the back there, on the off chance someone makes a left-hand turn onto their street. It makes me wonder how Pittsburgh drivers fair in other cities where cutting off a lane to make a left-hand turn is not the norm.

Stink bugs
I was introduced to these little critters when I first moved here. According to the NYTimes, they are an agricultural pest that has taken over the Midwest. These bugs seemed really dumb when i first met them. They would fly into walls, repeatedly. Windows I can understand but opaque cold surfaces? When it gets cold outside (as it has lately) they seek the indoor warmth. Or in my case one night, the warmth of a snuggly pair of pajama pants. They stink when they are attacked, which I found out that night when I inadvertently crushed one in said snuggly pajama pants. Though I am still creeped out by that experience, I learned something really cool about these buggers.

One day at work, colleagues and I sat around a table playing with a stink bug. We flipping it over on its back and watched it wiggle its legs in the air. Then it would anchor its two hindmost legs onto the ground and swing its body up into a vertical position. Once it was past the tipping point, the bug would fall onto its legs and proceed to scurry away. It was the coolest things to see, better than any Transformers movie. We kept doing this for at least five minutes. After a while, the bug seemed really pissed off at us (it tried to stare one of us down) so we felt compelled to stop.

This is what I have to report for now. It is always fun to go to a new place.