Friday, September 26, 2014

The bridge that almost killed my son

Aerial view of bridge collapse (Click-on-Detroit)



Shortly before dawn this morning, a few seconds after my son went by, a waste truck with a boon sticking out toppled a pedestrian bridge on to the freeway. The only one killed was the truck driver, a miracle that the others could stop in time. If it were just a bit later, kids would be on the bridge connecting a neighborhood and the school. The expressway being shut down for who knows how long? (they will try to remove the bridge today) puts a major crimp in many commuters' plans, including my son's.

So again he feels like he narrowly escaped death similar to having the tornado 2 years ago miss him by a quarter mile (though many houses were leveled, no one died). He thinks we should NOT buy the Dexter home as there is no below grade area to hide during tornados. I think he was closer to death being on a canoe in the boundary waters during a thunderstorm far from shore (why wasn't there a bit more planning?)

It has been beautiful this week with no rain in the forecast for a while ( except inconveniently on the day we planned a minitrip to the west part of the state next week).

I've been trying to enjoy it with runs, bike rides, an outside lunch, the Moms on my patio the other night before we go into the deep freeze soon.

What I haven't done is any trip planning or at least for our October trip. I did get a ticket for LA in late May to go to The Wedding using up soon to expire miles.

Some funny things this week. First I got a manicure at the local Chinese place  versus the far away, but much cheaper Chinese place near Shanna's (we live in the expensive district:gas is $3.60 a gallon here versus $3.18 at the Costco on the south side). My manicurist rattled on a mile a minute to me in Mandarin the whole time. There was no one else she could have been speaking to. Good job on the nails however. Then this morning I am running (I had a late start and early plans so I wasn't going to have very much time) I come across a very distraught Asian lady. She said she needed to find a bus to take her to the mall. Which mall? The mall (we do have lots of malls around here). No buses run through our neighborhood and she was walking away from  the busy road that has a bus line. What did she need to buy? (thinking that maybe she could buy it locally). A transformer for her computer (wtf? later I figured she meant a converter to change her Chinese computer into an American one..good luck with that even at the very big mall). I asked her if she knew Mandarin. Of course she did, she's Chinese. (Well not necessarily and I do know Chinese who speak Cantonese instead). I told her of the Chinese mall just a 10 minute walk away and covered with Chinese letters so she will know she's at the right place. Go into the grocery store there where everyone speaks Mandarin (English not so much) and someone there will know what she has to do . Maybe someone there has experience with these 'transformers'. Well at least I think they speak Mandarin. The restaurant has a beautiful waitress who was a well known news cast lady in Shanghai (probably Cantonese). Steve's boss knew her from his Shanghai days. How she ended up here from her glamorous career must be a story.

And then there was an incident with Soulmate. More than forty years ago I may have or may not have did something that I would not be proud of. My story is that this never happened. For a while, he was hellbent on finding the truth. The last time he attempted to get me to admit to it was 30 years ago while we were drinking. 
I'm not that drunk!
42 years later, I thought he had forgotten about this but with a very weak segue tried to trick me into possibly admitting to this while we were talking a few days ago.
Nope, still sticking to my story.

My bike is finally ready 2 weeks later. What's not clear is who is paying for this as I have not spoken to them directly. Below are some scenes from this week:

Depot Town : Ypsilanti

for some reason, there are pianos on the sidewalks in Ypsi these days

Usually these places are shut down as soon as they are opened as the law is so unclear

Where we had lunch today..a beautiful day to eat outside

My monster cheddar cauliflower. I included a few objects for scale

1 comment:

Elephant's Child said...

Your son was indeed lucky. Very lucky.
A mixed week.
And I have to say I am intrigued about the event which never happened.

Followers

Blog Archive