Walk before I run
Since I was able to get over to the Walker yesterday, I decided to work in my room till I had to go to the airport, but after a while my wheezing and sneezing was getting the best of me in this hermeneutically sealed hotel so I went out for a quick walk to check out the Mississippi all the way up here in Minneapolis. I was headed with a purpose to see the Stone Bridge that a railroad baron built and came across these public bikes that have recently been installed here. Someone said that Minneapolis has more bike lanes than any other city and someone responded, “And they can use them only in the month of August, ha!” But that plan was instantly a fiasco as the coding for the bike got all screwed up and two poor civilians I pulled off the street to help, couldn’t decipher and a phone call led to more confusion and so by the time it was all over with I was out $5.49 on my credit card and time wasted.
I picked up my step and got to the river which was twinkling in the sunshine – it warmed up considerably here and it was an amazingly beautiful summer’s day. Before I arrived at the bridge I saw this building in the distance – the Guthrie Theater designed by Jean Nouvel – impressive from this point of view, but grew monolithic the more I approached it. What you are looking at here is the cantilevered part.
Next I began crossing the bridge and could see the falls and locks from a more bird’s eye view from up here. Impressive. The might Mississippi still holds her allure even towards the top of it.
As I made my way to the other side of the river, I started to follow a group of Somali children who were enjoying their last day of school with a field trip to the river. They were students of a Somali charter school.
I followed them down to the river bed and there got a more bird’s eye view back up to the bridge I had just been on.
Now to get home to New Orleans the city that defines summer heat.