Unbuilding the Grace and Pearman Bridges


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.

September 21, 2006:
A bridge in Bali

By now, many of you know that when I travel, I look for a bridge. So here is a bridge in Bali. Why Bali? One of my colleagues has a home in Bali and decided that a retreat was in order to plan, without distraction our program for Singapore. Without distraction means no TV, no Internet, no phone and no rain. It was perfect.

Here is our flight path - VF 541 from Singapore to Denpasar, Bali and VF 542 from Denpasar to Singapore

Here is Bali

and here is the path from Denpasar to Bob's place - with an intermediate stop PJs by the beach.

Here is a Bali bridge

and here is Bob's home

and here is the waterfall below Bob's home - that feeds the Ayung River

Some street scenes: ladies carrying stuff

and more colorful ladies carrying stuff

A carriage

Moto-man

A lady walking by the beach

Then I visited some rice fields

Another field

Cutting rice

After separation, throwing it to separate the grains from the stalks

More throwing

A boy and girl having a date by the canal for rice field irrigation

At the local temple were some men with roosters

Herding ducks on the way home one evening

Our neighbors like pet snakes - so here is the green python and our neighbor's son

and another view of me and our friendly python

There was a wonderful evening dinner with a classical dance program.

Look at the eyes

And here also

On the way home, we stopped at PJs and watched a man net fishing while airplanes landed at Denpasar

Bye bye from Bali

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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