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.
Here is T-1, the worksite with Mickey, Ken and Jackie Sherrel loading and sequencing the dynamite for Friday's implosion
Ken and Jackie going up to load the cross-member
while Mickey is busy working on the tie-in at the base of T-1. Note the barrier of freight containers
Ken on the cross member
Receiving a powder punch for inserting the detonator with a tube of dynamite and tamping rod in his left hand
Here, inserting the detonator
and tamping the dynamite in place - while holding the shock tube coil
Getting the next tube of dynamite
and a bucket of stemming (small crushed rock to pack the hole
A nice view of the worksite with Ken in position
And Mickey, the architect, with his container shield
and sequencing the ignition pattern
Tieing in the shock tubes.
A view of the packed hole
The shock tube array (close). The red lines introduce a 25 msec delay while the yellow introduces a 9 msec delay. Thus the ignition sequence travels rapidly vertically (via the yellow shock tubes) before the lower detonators are triggered. The result, one of Mickey and Ken's perfect vertical drop implosions.
A good view of the shock tube array climbing the column
Day's end
and sunset.
and Sparky going home after a very long day
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer