3112 Walkway

Saturday, October 2, 2010

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age,
gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background,
is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.
-- Dave Barry --

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Today I joined combined members of the Mid-Hudson and the NYC Mensa groups on a walk across the Hudson River on the "Walkway Over the Hudson".

The walkway is an hundred-year-old railroad trestle, that had been abandoned for many years. Back in the late '90s a group of citizens decided to try to turn it into a pedestrian bridge. I was a member of the original start-up group, sold fund raising T-shirts at various fairs for two or three years. I had to cease my involvement when Jay got sick.

The project limped along because the founder of the group wanted to do it without any tax money, state grants, anything that would bind the group, but the maintenance costs were just too high. He was overruled and eventually ousted as the group got larger. Now the bridge is a state park. It opened last year, and today was the first-year celebration.

The bridge is something like 220 feet above the river. Go here for photos of scenes on and from the bridge - scroll down halfway for a slide show. It's about 1.25 miles across, almost 3 miles round trip from the parking lot to a picnic area across the river and back. That's the city of Poughkeepsie (p'KIP-see) in the background in the photos.

I was a bit frustrated because, if you check the photos at the link above, that very wide railing on the top of the guardrail was exactly at eye level for me. I had to scooch and peer between the railings to see anything. Annoying as it was, the big round railing has a purpose: when the wind blows, and it always blows, it enters the tubes at the gaps, and the bridge "sings". That was kind of neat.

After the walk, a smaller subset of us went out for dinner.
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