True Friday the 13th

[iago]

They say that Friday the 13th is supposed to be bad luck.  Well, today's was especially interesting. 

- Yesterday, some "monkey" (as my dad called him) drove a 14' truck under a 13' overpass, taking out a couple supports, downing the Disraeli Overpass, which is one of the major routes through downtown Winnipeg.  Totally screwed up traffic yesterday
- Today, we had a huge wind-storm.  It knocked a bunch of windows out of the Radisson Hotel and onto Portage, which is the other main route through downtown.  It was shut down for most of the afternoon/so far in the evening
- I was running late, and forgot my jacket
- My back/legs are still screwed up

So I leave work to go home at 4:00.  I hop on a bus which gets me downtown.  I end up in a line-up of buses as far as I can see, but I'm only a couple stops away from mine, so I hop off and hobble the rest of the way through downtown.  There were buses and cars backed up as far as I can see.  At the time, I didn't know what had happened. 

I walk to my next bus, and find wayy too many people there.  On one side of Portage, it was 3 lanes of buses, bumper to bumper.  Apparently, cars were being redirected and buses were slowwwwly working their way through.  Luckily, I was going away from downtown, so after my bus arrived (after about an hour of waiting in the cold), my bus showed up and I even go to sit down.  After I got on, it totally filled up, packed tight.  Luckily, my bus-driver was so far behind that he didn't care anymore, and he was just having fun, making jokes.  It was a looong, slow ride, and the bus behind us on the same route passed us (driver: "Hey everybody, wave to the other '25' that's passing us!"). 

In the end, I got home, only about 90 minutes late.  But it was fun! 

[Killer360]

Yeah, it was a bad day.

I heard about that truck smashing into the bridge, a few people in my class were late getting to school because of it.

Another bad thing to add -- My phys ed teacher did a stupid thing this morning... he thought that he could carry a TV down the stairs on the cart, but he couldn't, so the TV and the cart fell on top of him, and he got a concussion, and went to the hospital in an ambulance.

Interesting day, indeed.

[rabbit]

I kicked ass in SSBM and NGNT4.  Hmm.....weird indeed.

[Killer360]

LOL the bridge is going to be out for 3 weeks they estimate. 

[iago]

LOL the bridge is going to be out for 3 weeks they estimate. 

I'm not surprised, we're lucky that idiot didn't collapse the whole thing! 

This especially sucks for people like my sister who live in St James and work in Kildonan -- getting home is sloow going, now.  We're just lucky they've re-opened the Redwood Bridge, otherwise half the city would all be taking Higgins, which isn't designed for super-heavy traffic. 

For anybody who is curious, here's a map of down-town Winnipeg, including the Red River (which some of you Americans might know, since it runs through MN). 

The top-most is the Redwood Bridge.  It just re-opened after massive construction about a month ago.  Right now, all the traffic that can't cross at Disraeli Fwy is using it, so it's super-busy, but usable. 

The bridge with the red X is Disraeli, probably the busiest overpasses/bridges in the city.  Some big truck tried to go under it and took out a couple supports, so it's shut down for awhile. 

The bridge to the right of that is Higgins, which is a stereotypically bad area (Higgins & Main is the classic place to find the hookers).  It's 2 narrow lanes each way, and generally slow-going. 

The next bridge down is Provontier, which is also 2-lanes and fairly slow.  It goes through The Forks, which is a park.  On the plus side, there's a restaurant on the bridge, for some reason. 

And the next one down is a fairly large bridge, but it's very busy to begin with.  It tends to serve the south part of the city. 


The point is, Disraeli is VERY important to our city, and the fact that it's shut down is really bad, and we're very, very thankful that the Redwood bridge has re-opened.