The B Family Adventures: January 2011

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Golden Horse Go Boom!!

The building across the street from us has been undergoing demolition work since November. The going was fairly slow, and we kept waiting for something really exciting to happen. There had been a few exciting moments when they would cut chunks from the facade and let it fall 25 stories to the ground. A few days ago, they put up a notice that the building would be explosively demolished on Sunday morning between 6:30 and 7:30am. They told us that we would have to be >200m away from the property, and that those of us who's apartments faced the building would have to leave. So of course I did the only feasible thing one can do when faced with a 6:30am evacuation order; I invited all my friends over and we set up cameras and made Bloody Mary's.

Double click on this to open a new window. It may take a min to load, but it should be a looping mini movie made from my still photos.

At about 7:15 with no real warning what so ever, and with a local transit train about 100m away (they never stopped the trains), the explosives went off and took the building down. I had a video camera on it as well as my wide angle lens on my SLR. I got 18 shots of the process before the cloud of dust completely covered the window and made it as dark as night inside of the apartment. When the dust settled people swarmed in to start cleaning the dust out of the street with brooms. There was some dust blowing into our house through the horribly sealed windows.

You can click any of the photos to open a much larger view... it is worth it

total black out in the apartment... 3sec later it was literally pitch black

Aftermath

Dust that blew into our window though the shoddy weather stripping

Bunch of guys with brooms to clean it up... and a random car driving through... it is ok though, the car had his hazard lights on so it is fine.

The comfort of the U.S.

I was fortunate enough to spend the entire month of December in the U.S. visiting friends and family. I was pretty excited to return to the U.S. only after a little less than 2 months in China. When arriving I had a six hour layover in Los Angeles and my friend Dakota picked me up. We went to Applebee's, Target, and Starbucks; I don't know how much more American you can get. I was elated to go to Target, one stop shopping and no haggling. Finally after 36 hours of travel, I arrived at my first stop on my U.S, tour, Austin, TX where my friend Richelle was getting married. She was a stunning bride. After Austin I flew to Omaha, NE and stayed with my friend Cara and her husband Blaine. From there I rented a car and traveled in Dubuque, IA to visit Jessica and Gary, then to Madison, WI where I used to live. My time in Madison was cut short after learning a huge snow storm was going to be hitting the area. I left early and drove home to Spring Valley, MN where 20 inches of snow fell in 24 hours, welcome home! I had a great time enjoying an early holiday celebration with my family there. From there I was transported to Hudson, WI to visit more friends and finally I flew to Arizona where Andrew joined me to spend the last two weeks of my U.S. tour and Christmas with the Bain family.

Here are some photos from my tour of the U.S.: