In Which A Rail Takes a Sail for Reasons Not Known

Something is missing on the C Avenue Bridge ...

I feel a little naked biking now. My trusty Canon PowerShot camera, with which I documented RAGBRAI for two years, is on the fritz—it has a “lens error,” which means the lens does not open.

Looking down at Dry Creek, there's the missing railing.
How much does that much steel weigh?

I like that Canon a lot, but have only owned it a year. A digital camera, even one that gets a lot of use, should last longer, don't you think? Francis is more than three years old and going strong (of course, one bike I owned I rode for 30 years—probably a bit beyond a digital camera's life span).

Anyway, I do own an old Fuji digital that has 3x (yes, 3!) optical zoom and 3.2 megapixels (more than 3!) for image size. Hardly a “cool” camera by today's standards, but it deploys its lens and takes photos, as you can see.

Today, I rode to the gym in the morning and did the Lindale-Boyson Trail route on the way home. On the way there, I totally overlooked the big news of my biking route, which my wife, who walked, noticed right away.

A big chunk is missing from the rail of the C Avenue Bridge. A huge piece of steel was knocked or tossed into Dry Creek. This happened sometime Monday night. Was it a car? A truck? A sledgehammer? Onlookers want to know.

I took the derailed railing photos (with my trusty old Fuji) on the way home from MMU this afternoon.

So, blog fans, what do you think? What would have severed such a huge chunk of metal on one of the mean streets of Cedar Rapids?