Before We Leave on the Trip

Well, later today we will be starting a 10-day series of posts and pictures of the trip my wife and I took to South Dakota which started three-weeks ago today. But first a couple of things I just HAD to post about....

...Everyone Falling in Love With Me - Not
Great story this morning from the AP and the Star-Tribune:

A parking ticket topped the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile after it was left parked illegally on a downtown Chicago thoroughfare.

The 27-foot fiberglass sausage was ticketed Thursday morning after its driver parked it on Michigan Avenue and left it on the side of the six-lane road with the hazard lights blinking.

"The situation was resolved without the use of ketchup, which in Chicago is a big thing,'' said Matt Smith of the city's Streets and Sanitation Department.

"We have access to tow trucks that could have handled a Polish sausage, not just a hot dog,'' Smith said.

[An Oscar Meyer spokesperson] said illegal parking is against company policy, "even if you're driving a company vehicle that's shaped like a giant hot dog.''

On A More Serious Note
We went to the Guthrie last evening for their great presentation of Noel Coward's
Private Lives; but that is not what I want to mention. If you aren't aware, the new Guthrie Theater is on the Mississippi River in Downtown Minneapolis, closer to the I-35W bridge than the Metrodome. We got there early as did a lot of people and, like most immediately went to the 5th floor terrace to look. It is a magnificent view of the river from St. Anthony Falls to the 10th Ave bridge.

People were flocking to just look at the bridge that isn't there anymore. The first reaction, including mine, was to shake your head and stand in silence. Such a thing just isn't possible. Now there isn't a great view- too many trees in the way- but you can see over there on the far north side of the former bridge where that dark blue van sits at an angle. It is the one with the wheelchair access open on the passenger's side, where the driver- in a wheelchair- escaped.

Or you look down along 2nd St. and don't see anything wrong- until you realize that the road takes a sudden drop behind the trees. You don't see where it goes. It just goes.

We have seen these pictures countless times on the local and national news. They are burned into our Twin Cities collective unconscious now. But to stand there and - in real time and perspective - to see how far up the bridge was, how far it and the cars fell, to see how tiny that van appears in the great disaster, or how big the twisted metal of the brdge structure is- well, it is a very sobering moment.

It was almost like having to see it to truly believe it. Even the familiar places when shown on TV have a certain unreality. Here we were not looking at a screen- we had full view. There were no commentators or speeches or interpreters. It was raw footage, as they say in TV, that we were taking in ourselves.

Humbling. Scary. Overwhelming. And in awe that so many people survived.