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.
Its clean-up time. What remains is the stub of the tooth and Manny and team will finish the job
Inspecting the after-blast remains
One of the remaining blankets - Another Sparky art photo
Pulling the spud to relocate Manny's barge
The cleanup site
Repositioning the barge
What I call the "pushover" worksite
Our man, Manny
Paul discussing the pushover strategy
using the 1250 - with Manny sitting in Michael's old seat
Before starting - this will be a duet for two grapples - Manny on the barge with the 1250 and ? on the port side
The cargo container barrier
Click and watch moving the cargo container. Here, starting to move the cargo box
and moving
and with the cargo barrier clear
and the 1250 in position -
Its time for the big pushes
Manny takes a bite
and here is the pier core
and the push sequence
Splash
Next position and
push,
push,
and splash
And again - practice makes perfect.
Cleaning the top of the pier foundation
Help from the port side
Cleanup
Manny and Paul
More cleaning
Manny at the 1250 controls
and so it goes
Click to watch Manny clean the top of the foundation - and taking another bite
Cleaning the top of the foundation
and here, a little fix-it job
Carlos - king of the mountain
Finished
The captain - that has been positioning the barge
and closing with a piece of "Sparky art"
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer