Still no jury duty

No jury today.

I don't get downtown much and to the Courthouse even less so today I took along my camera. The formal name of the huge sculpture in the lobby of the Courthouse is "Vision of Peace". It is carved from onyx and is more popularly known as "Onyx John".

The statue is the largest carved onyx figure in the world. It stands on a motorized turntable which slowly rotates throughout the day.

They called two panels this morning and the remaining numbers in the spacious waiting area were reduced to about 20. This is a huge reduction from the mob of well over 100 that originally mustered for duty on Monday morning. We 20 were absolutely the last available panel for this week. They told us that there were parties in a conference room upstairs trying to reach a settlement. Failure to reach this settlement would result in the final dregs of the weekly jury pool, us, being summoned to the courtroom in the upper reaches of the building. We weren't doing anything but our presence was still required.

Jury duty when you don't get called for any juries is a matter of sitting in the waiting room and taking the occasional break. When you are already not doing anything it is a bit hard to take a break but I went outside with my camera on morning break.

This is a view of the Mississippi from the Wabasha Street Bridge with the High Bridge spanning the gorge upstream.The jury pool settled in after lunch to do our duty. I did mine in the TV room where I had no trouble convincing the 2 other people in the room to watch Euro 2008. Eventually by game time there were 5 of us in there, one doing a jig saw puzzle, one reading and believe it or not, 3 guys actually interested in the game, including one other guy who seemed fairly knowledgeable about what was going on. What was going on was that the Germans were pretty impressive. Germany 3, Portugal 2.

There has been a repaving project completed on Hamline Avenue north of County Road C all the way to the end of Hamline where it joins Snelling. The bicycling news is that in addition to newly smooth pavement there has been a major restriping of the paved area. This section of road formerly featured white lines about 8 to 12 inches from the edge of the street. The area outside the lines could best be described as "gutter" and it was full of gravel, glass and other usual detritus of the streets.As you can see, the new configuration features markedly narrowed car lanes and 3 or 4 feet of smooth new pavement outside the line. I ride this area a lot. I have always sought out the parallel street a block away, not so much because of the traffic, although it wasn't particularly pleasant. I rode a block over because the pavement and trash on the pavement were more likely to produce a flat tire than a smooth ride. With the new pavement and striping I am going to have to reconsider where I want to ride.

Doesn't it look nice?