Walkway over the Hudson

Nine years ago (God I'm old), my roommate and I got chased off by the cops when we tried to get onto the old railroad bridge that crosses the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie (I had an old guidebook that said you were allowed on it, which was apparently a few decades out of date.)

Since then, the Walkway Over the Hudson organization has been doing this:


And this:


And this:


And this:


So that the bridge would look like this:

(All pictures above stolen borrowed from walkway.org.)

This weekend, that ratty old railroad bridge is turning into the longest elevated pedestrian walkway in the world. The frickin' world! What's up now, places that aren't Poughkeepsie?

I've been reading the Poughkeepsie Journal articles on the bridge for years, and I'm really effing stoked that it's opening up. The bridge is 1.25 miles long and stands 212 feet over the water, which I'm guessing would make it really fun to pee off of.

Here's our little family out by the bridge a couple of weekends ago:

And here's a better shot I stole stole from the Poughkeepsie Journal:

I think we'll probably stay home this weekend and wait for things to settle down -- they're talking about shuttle buses (public transportation is fantastic for other people) because there won't be a single parking space anywhere near Poughkeepsie for the grand opening, maybe not even at the Ames that's been closed for ten years.

But this is a freakin' excellent development, and the people who made this happen deserve some serious karma coming their way. Living in Greater Poughkeepsie (a phrase that Google just informed me I did not invent) is about to get a whole lot cooler.