After

This is a little selfish but commuting really really sucks now, even by bike. This morning I found my usual crossing bridge (dotted blue line below) cordoned off -- so I went further upriver to the 3rd Avenue bridge but really not crazy about crossing there. Tomorrow morning may try the Washington Avenue bridge down by the university, we'll see how that goes. After what I saw of traffic on the bridges during rush hour this evening I'm not going to even try commuting by car for a while.

Did see a distant glimpse of some of the wreckage from the pedestrian bridge over 35W at 5th Street (going beneath 35W at 2nd Street is out of the question) -- you could not see down into the river valley from there, but could see the far side of the riverbank, where the bridge was pitched steeply down the riverbank down to where it disappears behind the edge of the near side of the bridge, with a few cars still dangling on it like little flies dangling awkwardly from a spiderweb.

Looking straight down onto 35W a mile north of the river is eerie -- I've never seen that freeway just completely, totally devoid of cars. The emptiness and silence feels 'weird'. Reminds me of just after September 11th when the skies went silent for days.

Had a community meeting tonight about some neighborhood redevelopment stuff, and with our committee chair out I had to do the welcome speech and lead the moment of silence for the bridge disaster victims and so on -- eh, this public speaking stuff does not come naturally to me at all, especially when the atmosphere is so somber.