Life in Minnesota, Part 1

Since we've got most of the wedding stuff out of the way I've decided to post stuff about what it's like for us up here in Minneapolis. Most people know about the bridge that collapsed here in Minneapolis last August and before we even moved here we were getting questions about how it might effect us. It's of course hard to answer that since we don't know what life would have been if the bridge were still around, but at most the absence of the 35W bridge just makes some of our travel times a little longer. I take the bus into school and even though I have to cross the river to get to my building, the bus takes a bridge that's about a mile south of the bridge that collapsed. In fact, the collapse didn't seem real to me until I drove by where it once was and realized that there was a huge hole where a road should be. It's hard to imagine what it was like for the people who were there during the collapse.

Anyway, several weeks ago I was eating lunch outside and realized that it would probably be my last opportunity to comfortably take some pictures of the area around my building. The psychology building on the East bank of the Mississippi river and is fairly close to the 35W bridge. I thought I'd take some pictures of the remaining bridges over the river and the last vestiges of the 35W bridge. So, I started with the view from my lunch spot. In this picture you can see downtown Minneapolis in the background. You can also see a pedestrian bridge, which is about a two minute walk away from the psychology building.
To get some pictures of where the 35W bridge once was, I walked to the pedestrian bridge and took some pictures from there. If the 35 W bridge were still around, it would be just behind the one that's still standing in this next picture. If you look closely you can see some of the foundation for the old bridge, and construction equipment along the river banks (it's easiest to see on the right side). You can also see Saint Anthony Falls in the background.By the time I took these pictures the cleanup was complete, and they were about a week away from starting construction on a new bridge. One of the eeriest things about the missing bridge, however, is that it's not really missing - it's just downstream. In the next picture you can see the twisted steel girders that have been pulled out from the river and lined up on the west bank. Although you can't see it in this picture, it looks like the NTSB is making good on their promise to put the bridge back together to figure out why it fell apart. My bus takes the bridge in the back of the picture to cross the river, and from there you can see that some of the girders have been arranged into what appears to be their original configuration.