Day 7: Chicago
Welcome
Yesterday we drove from Minneapolis to Chicago and played at Logan Square Arts Festival.
Tristan and I started our day with a run down to the Mississippi River and then we all got on the road for a gentle 11am departure. For breakfast I had a salted caramel protein bar.
📷 Tristan Deck
A couple of hours out of Chicago we were rear ended by a pickup truck towing a big trailer that failed to stop when we ran into some backed-up traffic. Luckily no one was injured in the collision and the Wisconsin State Patrol did a fine job of escorting us to a safe shoulder where we could sort out the paperwork.
I am sad to say that James Van Der Beek will no longer be accompanying us on this tour. The rear cargo door has been damaged to the point where it no longer closes so we will be finding a replacement van to ensure the security of our belongings. We still made it to our soundcheck on time and we had a fantastic gig thanks to the wonderful staff at the Logan Square Festival and the incredibly enthusiastic crowd we played to.
My bridge of the day is the Minneapolis Stone Arch Bridge. It was commissioned by railroad tycoon James J. Hill to provide access for his Great Northern Railway to the soon to be constructed Minneapolis Great Northern Depot on the West bank of the Mississippi. It was designed by the engineer Charles C. Smith and completed in 1883 after only 22 months of construction. The bridge is 640m long and was originally constructed with 23 limestone arches. In 1962 two spans were replaced with a steel truss to allow boats to access the newly completed Upper Lock and Dam. At the time it was built most engineers thought that it would be impossible to build a stone arch bridge for rail traffic due to vibrations causing the stone to crumble, but the 136 year-old Stone Arch Bridge is now one of the oldest surviving bridges on the Mississippi river.
Minneapolis Stone Arch Bridge.📷 John A. Weeks IIIIf you want a great source of information on bridges and highways, aircraft, spacecraft, locomotives, or twelve-step guides on how to watermark digital photographs, please be sure to visit John Weeks' website.
We ticked another item off our tour photo bingo list yesterday which was 'More than 18 wheels truck'. To clarify, this means more than nine axles.
Photo and forensic analysis credit, TristanDeck.
We also ticked off 'Ute', which was not a huge challenge once we left Europe but we at least found a weird Subaru one.
Weird Subaru Ute.📷 Jonathan Pearce
Beth of the day goes to Tristan for his attempt at making a safe emergency stop that was only thwarted by the idiotic following distance of the truck behind us.