For Sparky and myself, curiosity drives passion which in turn fuels our life's engine. Our passion was capturing the story of both unbuilding the Grace (1929 - 2007) and Pearman (1966 - 2007) Bridges and discovering the unbuilders. It takes a lot of passion to track a project from July 2005 until April 2007 - rain, shine, hurricanes or moving to Singapore. We discovered the joy of discovery learning. Ken Canty opened the front door for us - then Steve Testa, Ponch Billingsley and Mickey Rogers opened many side doors. Below are the highlights of what we discovered, who we met and what we learned.
And a reminder from T.S. Eliot (East Coker from the Four Quartets)
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
Today is loading day - Mickey and Ken on the right and Carlos and Michael on the left (I think). Loading consists of placing 1 or more charges with a detonator in the hole, followed by another charge or spacer or stemming. This is tamped into place, the shock tube tail is left hanging to be tied in with the other shock tubes in a predetermined sequence. Sparky got several sequences of loading which I synthesized into short video segments
Only Sparky could catch such an artistic view of the morning work site
The Seabreeze windows are boarded up (again)
I am speculating that Carlos and Michael are loading on the left
while Mickey and Ken are loading on the right. A good example of parallel processing
Another view of dual processing
Closer
Here Carlos and Michael are loading
and tamping
Takes two to tamp
Mickey and Ken tieing in a leader while Carlos and Michael loading on the left
A closer view of Mickey connecting the shock tubes
A close image of the shock tube leader
A closer view of Mickey
With Carlos and Michael supervising?
Not only are ironworkers acrobats - blasters can also be acrobats
An interesting view of the worksite
Mickey loading a charge of dynamite
A handoff from Ken
Ken preparing another charge
Mickey inserting a spacer
and Ken hands another spacer to Mickey
Then tamping. Click to watch Mickey and Ken load.
More loading by Mickey
And a last look at the worksite
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer