A Dream Come True

In a story that will warm the hearts of frustrated commuters everywhere, we bring you this report of a very happy day. A Maryland man lived a dream come true on Tuesday morning when he got to do what every commuter has wanted to do at least once.

He got to blow up the bridge that had been a daily torment to him for 30 years.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - A long-suffering commuter fulfilled the dreams of generations of Washingtonians on Tuesday morning when he blew up a detested Potomac River bridge.

Maryland electrician Dan Ruefly won a contest to detonate a section of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, which carries the Capital Beltway across the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia just south of the District of Columbia. Regional authorities have been building a replacement since 2000.

"It's past due. It was past due a couple of years after it was built," said Ruefly, who crosses the bridge before 6 a.m. on weekdays to beat traffic on his two-hour commute.

The bridge has long been one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in a region notorious for gridlock. Eight lanes of Beltway traffic funnel down to six lanes, and backups can stretch for miles when the drawbridge is raised 270 times a year to let boats through.

As the midpoint of Interstate 95, the East Coast's busiest highway, the bridge also handles a heavy flow of long-distance traffic.

Seconds after Ruefly pushed down the ceremonial plunger at 12:34 a.m., a cascade of flashes lit the underside of the bridge and thunderclaps rolled across the river. The steel girders of the old span collapsed in a cloud of dust as spectators on a nearby overpass cheered.

Ruefly, of Accokeek, Maryland, has had to contend with the Wilson Bridge every working day for the past 30 years. His hip was crushed in an accident on the bridge in 1999.

One span of the replacement bridge is now open with the rest expected to be finished by 2008. It will take another three years after that to finish everything else, so the commute won't get a whole lot better in the short term. But I would imagine that Ruefly is the envy of thousands right now.