(no subject)

[janradder]

An article in today's Minneapolis StarTribune says that the 35W Bridge is on pace to open the September.  It's hard to believe that a bridge of its size could collapse and then be rebuilt in just a little more than a year.  I drive by the construction quite a lot as I often need to make a trip up to Nordeast to buy dog food or make a run to Surdyk's.  Initially, after the collapse, getting from South Minneapolis to Northeast was quite a hassle -- a lot of traffic, a lot of detours, and the 10th Avenue bridge -- which is the quickest route in the absence of a highway route as it runs parallel to where the 35W bridge stood -- was closed for several weeks and when it finally reopened it was clogged with gawkers.  Since then,  people have readjusted commutes and travel routes and it almost feels like we've always been without this bridge.  It's strange how quickly people can adjust, forgetting the thirteen deaths caused by the bridge collapse and the 143 injuries, and get on with their lives when they aren't personally affected by the tragedy, just inconvenienced.

The construction itself is quite breathtaking to behold -- the area is strewn with enormous canes standing tall above the work.  There are two spans of the bridge already in place, green rebar creating a lacework around the edges and wooden forms covering everything else and the top is filled with workers doing who knows what but looking quite busy.  I actually love driving past the site, just to see the work going on, the cranes, the excavators, the huge piles of earth and gravel, the bulldozers and loaders, the workers, the concrete being poured into forms on the south side of the Mississippi.  I keep hoping to take my camera and ride my bike over to the site just to take photos of it.  The half dozen or more cranes intersecting in the sky over the two bridge spans that are being worked on are quite beautiful and I would love to capture them in an image.

Still, each time I drive past, even as I marvel at the work, I can't help but feel sad and still shocked that such a large piece of construction could just fall into the river.  I drove that bridge countless times since haddayr and I moved to Minneapolis in 1993 and I always hated it.  I have a natural phobia of bridges -- always have since I was a kid -- and just assumed that my unease about the 35W bridge was caused by that phobia.  Maybe it was, but still, I just felt unsafe on that bridge -- always -- like I knew something bad would happen on it someday.  Haddayr has often talked about traumatic events reaching back into the past like an echo from the future.  Perhaps that's what I'd felt.  I wonder if I'll feel the same when the new bridge is built?

Comments

[silk-noir.livejournal.com]

Construction is fascinating, isn't it?

[janradder.livejournal.com]

It really is. We've got another large construction site that I pass every time I pick Éiden up from preschool -- both of us geek out over the giant excavators.

[barthanderson.livejournal.com]

Me and Isaiah, too.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the work on the Crosstown Commons? Currently there is a bridge begun which leads to nowhere (there's something about those that I really like) -- lots of giant excavators working too. I keep meaning to take Éiden down by the construction site where he can see more than he does as we quickly drive by.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

i don't know. some of those places still feel...something.

i think once you know, you may get on with everyday, but there is a lingering sense of what was.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I've been to the battlefields of Gettysburg and Culloden and you could definitely feel something at both of those places -- a very somber intense sadness. The strange thing, for me, abut the 35W bridge was that I felt this sense of danger before it ever collapsed. When I first learned that it had fallen, I have to say that although I was shocked I wasn't really all that surprised -- it was like I knew that something like this was bound to happen.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

I definitely want to know what you feel when you cross it in September.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I'll let you know.