For the record, I want to say that I looked up the address myself. I had it. It was in my phone. I told Caspian the address and he said, and I am quoting directly, "I know a better way."
This is how we ended up on a residential street somewhere near West Third, behind an orange construction barrel, at 6:47 PM, on a night that had started warm and cloudy and was now doing something even more aggressively warm. The hazy sunshine that had teased us all afternoon had burned off into just — heat. Real July air. The kind that sits on you. Caspian had his window down and his elbow out like a man in a truck commercial, except we were not moving.
"This closure wasn't here last week," he said.
I did not ask him how he knew that.
Caspian's relationship with Duluth's road infrastructure is personal. It's almost spiritual. He grew up here, which he will mention, and he has a working theory that the city posts detour signs as suggestions rather than requirements, and that locals who truly understand the grid can move through construction zones the way water moves through rock — finding the small channels, the overlooked cuts, the turns that aren't on any app. He calls this "reading the city." I call it "the reason we are currently watching a utility truck block the only other exit from this block."
We had been trying to get to the Mac-Tini Bar because his coworker Petra had mentioned it and Caspian had decided this was a cultural obligation. He'd described it as "a mac and cheese bar with martini energy" in a tone that suggested he had personally curated the concept. He had never been. He had looked at one photo.
"Okay," he said, pulling up his own phone. "So if we just—"
"I have the address."
"I know, but if we come at it from London Road—"
"London Road," I said, "has been under construction since April."
He looked at me. "Since April of what?"
"Of this year, Caspian. April 27th. It's been in the news. There are signs."
He made a face that meant he had seen the signs but had assessed them as not applying to his specific route. This is another feature of his navigation philosophy: signs are informational, not instructional.
We found parking eventually, a ten-minute walk away, which Caspian described as "honestly ideal, we needed to move our bodies." It was eighty-four degrees. I was wearing sandals that were not built for optimism. He walked with his hands in his pockets like he had planned all of this, like the detour and the utility closures and the extra twelve minutes of sun exposure were part of a design he'd been refining quietly for years.
The mac-tini thing was fine. It was fun. The space had good light and someone at the bar was talking loudly about the Sister Cities event at the DECC's new plaza, and Caspian got into a genuinely charming conversation with a stranger about whether mac and cheese is technically a comfort food or whether comfort is too low a bar for something that excellent. I watched him be delightful. I drank something cold.
On the way back to the car, he said, "I think I know why that block was closed. There's a skywalk tunnel section near there that they've been doing maintenance on, it's probably related."
"How do you know that?"
"I just pay attention," he said.
He had not, at any point this evening, looked at a single official city notice. He had also navigated us directly past two signs that said ROAD CLOSED LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY and made his own determination about whether we qualified. We had, in his view, qualified.
I love him. I want to say that clearly. But if anyone from the city of Duluth is reading this: he is going to do it again next weekend. He already mentioned there's something happening at the Waterfront Plaza. He is already forming a theory about the best route.
I am going to write down the address and put it somewhere he cannot optimize.