Bridge

Probably every blogger from the Twin Cities area has as today's entry either a picture of the new bridge or musings on the fall of the old bridge and the construction of the replacement.

To anyone who hasn't heard, the new bridge opened today, 35W is back in service. I thought about riding over there. The wind was fairly strong from the southwest, the right wind conditions for a ride to the bridge. But I thought the whole bridge scene might maybe be a bit crowded, even the bicycle/pedestrian part. My decision finally came down to that I wasn't there when the bridge fell down, I am going to have to be okay with not being first on the scene when the new bridge opens.

But I did ride south, across the freeway. This is a spot which experienced greatly increased traffic when the bridge went down. It is the intersection of I94 and 280. Hwy 280 was the route that picked up the 35W bypass traffic. This route dumped the traffic onto 94 as the alternative river crossing.One snapshot probably doesn't tell much but it does appear that traffic is moving fairly well, at least for this day and for this moment. We shall all see in the days to come what the new bridge means to traffic in this city.

Meanwhile, this is a bicycle blog. It was 80+ again today, still in the mid 70s for most of my ride. There was a little too much wind but it was a spectacular day for the last half of September, I had a pretty nice ride. I ibu-ed this morning and not again any time today, so another substantial reduction in drug use. My hip still hurts a little. The little shimmy that you have to do to get into the car is still a chore I haven't quite figured out, but I now think I am pretty much over the whole tweaked my back thing.

I felt good, I rode fairly hard.