Pittsburgh (Thornburg), Dayton with Dick Reynolds, and Indianapolis.

Friday's plans to take a look at downtown Pittsburgh were foiled when a hostage situation caused that part of the city to be shut down. We were glad to learn later that the hostage taker was persuaded to surrender, in part by the 756 (or so) Facebook messages he received: "Hey, dude! This isn't yo,(sic)," for example. Pithy. Direct.

Instead, we used the morning to find Thornburg, the part of Pittsburgh where my mother grew up. We hit the jackpot, with her school, now a community center and day care center, got a full tour from Ingrid, the staff coordinator, spotted a photo in the library of students from my mother's era. got an interesting little history of the area from a custodian, and then found Mother's house, just down the street.

Lovely drive across the gently hilly part of Ohio -- and about 2 inches of W. Va., to Dayton, where we met Dick Reynolds, former dean of the medical school (RWJMS), whom I'd written about last year. Joined by his daughter Karen, we had a good dinner ---- late lunch for us --- at 6 p.m., back to his apartment for some more schmoozing and cappuccino choc. chip ice cream, then hit the interstate.As forewarned by our hosts for the night at Buck Creek Farm, we drove through monster rains, but pulled in by 9, to a warm welcome and settled into our sweet suite, the entire back, upstairs of the farmhouse, beautifully restored.