A Cherry on Top

We found Honest A’s Auto shop in downtown Minneapolis, and dropped the truck off to get the AC repaired. A perfect opportunity to explore the city on our bikes! The outdoor Minneapolis Sculpture Garden made Quincy’s list of things to do in Minnesota, and it’s an impressive, expansive place. The cherry on a spoon fountain, was not what drew Quincy in to say ‘we have to go there’ however. Rather, it was another garden-variety-larger-than-life object in the form of a bright blue chicken.

Less than 2 miles from our car-care drop-off, the sculpture garden immersed us in art to interpret for a good hour and a half before we reminded ourselves we had an entire city, er twin cities! to explore.

The Basilica of St. Mary we’d planned to visit was closed due to the pandemic. Here’s a photo of one of the doors. Too bad we weren’t able to enter.

A few miles East we crossed over the Mighty Mississippi yet again. Our bridge across gave us stunning views of the first Lock and Dam along the waterway. (A tiny piece of it visible to the far right of the photo below.) Also noteworthy, the stone archway bridge is the only one along the entire Mississippi River. We meandered around the St. Paul side of the river, and biked back across along the stone bridge, which is closed to vehicles.

We worked our way back through downtown, this time stuck on the sunny side of every street. We were making our way towards the heart of the civil unrest following the George Floyd killing. Heartfelt murals, homemade signs, and burned and even now leveled buildings greeted us in increased number as we grew closer to the heartache of the epicenter.

A few of the many, many murals we saw on our ride…

Streets are still blocked off in every direction from 38th and Chicago.

Adequately contextualizing his death is well beyond what we could possibly convey in a brief post. The memorial is sobering, provocative, and testament to how numb we’ve grown as a society to the news of an ‘unarmed African-American man who died while he was being detained by police.‘ One of the most difficult and powerful pieces to the memorial was a block-long list of Americans who have been killed in recent years. Eliot and I slowly walked the street reading each name. Will this finally awaken the conscience of the country that Black Lives Matter? Seeing peaceful protests across the country makes this moment feel like one in which lasting change is possible.

Soon after leaving the memorial we got word the truck was ready. We pedaled back to where we’d started the day. Back to the same location, but changed. A quick stop at Minnehaha Falls, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s house nearby lightened our mood and cooled us off a bit (as did the now fixed AC!).