January 24, 2006: Neil Myers - night owl
I usually sleep when the night crew is working and I finally realized
that catching the night crew in action needed a bit of catching up.
And as usual, things
don't always go according to plan.
Ponch took me up on the Grace in the early evening - here is Neil
(from the left), Ponch and Hugh
And in this case,
the one of the big Cats developed some sort of arthritis of the shear. Neil is
in the foreground - and behind is Larry working away at reversing the
shear arthritis. To the right and below is the catch barge for
catching the debris (not to be confused with the barge / crane to the right
In the meantime Ponch and Neil and Tod are doing whatever Ponch, Neil and Tod
do while Rick is driving
A couple of weeks later - the Grace roadway work was complete and
Neil's group was harvesting girders from below while Paul's group
was freeing the girders from above. Here is the his small orchestra:
The overpass looking south down Immigration Drive. Jackie in his Cat (Paul's
Team) above as the Chris and his crane (below)
lowers a concrete girder
Neil directing from below while (silent) Paul - directs from above
A month later, Neil's team had worked its way to East Bay.
I got to the work site late (meaning about 4am) when most of the
action was over. Neil, to the right with his arms folded,
has completed his conducting the night symphony orchestra
The night teams taught me a lot - and doing night photos was a big time
learning experience for me. Neil made it all possible.