As close as I got to the 35W tragedy

Yesterday we drove north on 35W, the main artery of Minneapolis, the home to the Minnesota Vikings and Twins.  I also caught an absurd advertisement just in front of the Metrodome after we ate at the Spaghetti Factory.  Today, I adventured over the Mississippi River on the Central Avenue bridge to take photos out of my car window as I drove into downtown Minneapolis.  I shot the two bridge photos in the direction of the University of Minnesota and where the 35W bridge had collapsed four days ago.  I was surprised to earlier find out from my sister Katherine, that she and her husband had travelled south on the 35W bridge just about 15 minutes before the tragedy to get to a picnic in south Minneapolis.  While enjoying their picnic, they heard a bridge collapsed but all were confused as to which bridge since there are so many that span the Mississippi River to join the two diverse cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. 

However, where the bridge caved in joins two parts of Minneapolis and the Washington Avenue bridge joins the West bank to the East bank of the University of Minnesota campus.  When I took Highway 55 going south out of Minneapolis downtown today, I saw all the Interstates of 94 and 35W closed, no cars flowing as they usually do.  It reminded me of the time when Mikhail Gorbachev came to visit Minneapolis in 1990 or 1991, I can’t remember when exactly but all major Interstate roads were closed to traffic on a murky Sunday such as this Sunday.  Gorbachev’s motorcade solemnly rode by as we watched transfixed from above through chainlink fences, a unified, quizzed neighborhood.  Little did I know at that time how important a man Gorbachev was to allow the Soviet Union to dissolve and how much I would be involved teaching in three C.I.S. countries after his most auspicious visit. (Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine) In one regard, Gorbachev’s visit in the early 1990s was like a bridge to the U.S. to join two entities, East vs. West. Yet, we have been struggling to repair the damage done over the course of 70 years of communism ever since.  Now, we have a real bridge that is down on the same highway Gorbachev likely travelled over and all will be focussed in getting the bridge back up for efficient flow from East Bank to West Bank and vice versa.