The Aerie
Monday I was driving to work on West River Road, which is a quiet parkway that follows the Mississippi along St. Paul's western border. It's 25 MPH, which for most cases means 40 MPH, but I've learned to be cautious. Unlike its counterpart across the river, there are a lot of police cruisers patrolling WRR, particularly on its southern end.
So I'm following this taxi, he's doing about 35, I'm doing a little less because he's pulling away from me. Around the curve ahead comes another taxi in the opposite direction.
It flashes its headlights three times, and the brake lights come on in the taxi ahead of me.
"Interesting," methinks. We slow and round the curve ahead... and pass a squad car parked in a bay on our side of the road, radar gun in hand.
So apparently the International Cabbie Signal for "speed trap ahead" is three flashes of the headlights.
Good to know!
I have written in the past about my deep disdain for the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. This crumpled-up beer can of a building was dropped beside the Mississippi River on West River Road some fifteen years ago or so, and nobody has recycled it since. Architects apparently love it, but few of them I think have ever driven east towards it at sunset, when it reflects the glare in to brain-piercing needles of fierce solar radiation. Nor, I suspect, have any of them ever strolled along the river bank in the autumn, when the warm colors of the leaves are interrupted by its severe slate-gray reflection of the overcast sky. It's an ugly, ugly building, but maybe, as with jazz, I just don't "get it."
Anyway the news had a story last week about this thing growing another limb, and Frank Gehry is being brought back to direct the sequel. Being the shy, reserved type that I am, I sent in a letter to the paper.
On Saturday when I took my daughter to Al's Breakfast for Dad 'n' Kid Day, I checked the paper. No sign of my letter. "That's okay, " I told my daughter, jokingly, "sometimes they save the good letters for Sunday."
Sunday the paper showed up, and I opened to the letters but didnt' see my name. Then I realized that the letters wrapped around a gray-boxed photograph, in a spot reserved for the "Letter of the Day." The photo: the Weisman Art Museum: the letter "Given the eyesore he left us last time, I hope Frank Gehry's addition to the Weisman Art Museum is a giant bottle of Visine."
Woo hoo! Not just letter... Not just saved for Sunday... but Sunday Letter of the Day!
Than Kew, Than Kew, I accept this award, and all the honors and privileges accruing thereto...
So I turned left up to University Avenue, down two blocks, turned back onto WRR again... and stopped. Different construction vehicles were scattered all over the road ahead. Looking back, I could see the first vehicle still trying to park, and between it at me a sign which no doubt read "Road Closed Ahead"... which I couldn't see earlier because the truck was in the way.
So I three-point the car around to head back to University Avenue...
And there's a gigantic semitrailer swinging wide into my lane in order to pull into a business. Of course he misjudges the turn and has to back up to try again.
So I sat in my car in the middle of the intersection and listened to the radio. Whaddaya gonna do?
Note to self; West River Road by downtown Minneapolis is busy in the morning.
Posted by Albatross at March 15, 2007 1:15 PM | TrackBackActually, flashing of the headlights - not necessarily limited to 3 times - is a well known warning signal for police traps. We use it out here in the sticks all of the time. I learned it from my father who learned it as a teenager in rural Indiana and Kentucky.
Posted by: B.D. at March 16, 2007 8:36 AMBeing a law-abiding citizen, I never learned such a thing. I simply always drive the speed limit.
In the left-hand lane.
With my blinker on.
It's just safer that way.
Posted by: Albatross at March 16, 2007 8:40 AM