Remains of the city

-3 when I stepped out to bike to work this morning. I wondered how my hands would be. They were fine encased in gloves encased inside old ski mittens. I have a selection of glove/mitten options I'm experimenting with.

We're a couple weeks past the shortest day and with a fine start to the day it was lighter biking to work. No wind and dry roads and paths so no ice either.

I bike home through the city using Gloucester St from Rolleston Ave to Barbados St. On a bike I could go the wrong way along foot paths and use sections only 1-way in the other direction.

It was utterly surreal and completely strange. I didn't linger. I don't want to find out how robust what's left of the central city is in a decent shake. In places cordons, empty buildings with some remaining windows, deep winter shadows and no lit shops combined to create a somber and uneasy emptiness with only a narrow slice of road to navigate along.

Here I'm opposite the soon to be demolished central library (I think it's coming down). That's the back of Rydges Hotel on the right and Clarendon Towers with the 3 cranes demolishing it.

I'm not sure what the brutally stark remains are on the left. I don't think it's quite far enough into Cathedral Square to be the ANZ building.

I'll take this route again on my bike with my camera and more nerves.