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.
Watching the unbuilding acrobats beats the circus any day of the week. Here Sparky captured the continuation of building the Town Creek truss structure - piece by piece. Earlier we saw Ken Canty's step by step sequencing of the cutting process. Here is another example. An overview of the Port side of the Grace cantilever
Supported by the crane, our acrobats burn through the plate
Burning in context - on top, buring through the plate while the crane stabilizes the girder section
A gentle lift and separation (note lower right gap)
continued cutting through the top girder
more cutting, lifting and separation
final separation
and break away
rotating to lower the segment on the barge
The edge of the port-side cantilever, the Drum Island cantilever and lowering the section
down to the barge
then laying it over on its side
almost down and
down and sleeping
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer