Tag Archives: bridge

Foggy Golden Gate Bridge

Moving means you don’t always have a lot of time for having fun. However, when your move includes a time when you are in limbo between two places and staying in temporary accommodation, you actually have more time than you think. Sitting around in a hotel room can get old pretty quickly so scheduling some exploration makes a lot more sense. One place that a colleague had mentioned was out on the Marin headlands. There are a number of areas out there that caught my interest including one that wasn’t open on this day so will be the subject of a return trip and a future blog post I hope.

We had plenty to look forward to and the forecast was promising so off we headed. Of course, we hadn’t counted on the fickle Bay Area weather. Leaving the East Bay in glorious sunshine, we got to the Bay Bridge and drove into a wall of fog. I had chosen this route as I had yet to travel over the new bridge having seen it under construction for a number of years. This time I did get to drive over it but I didn’t get to see it! Oh well, on through the city of San Francisco towards the Golden Gate Bridge and straight back into the fog.

Again we drove over a bridge we couldn’t see. Then we turned out onto the Marin headlands. The drive up the coast took us out of the fog and into glorious sunshine. Looking back at the city and the bridge, it was a different story. Below us was a thick bank of fog. It also lay over some of the parts we intended to explore. As it happened, we explored some parts and saved others for another day. The fog didn’t thin while we were there. If anything, it got worse while we were there. Now we have a reason to go back – if we can forecast the weather better than we did this time!

Brides on the Bridge!

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Photography can be a frustrating thing. So often when you don’t have a camera to hand, you see something that would have made an interesting picture. Then again, I have had many experiences when I was shooting something else that something came along which caught my eye and I could grab some shots. Perhaps the lesson here is that there is almost always something interesting going on as long as you are looking!

I was actually shooting out of our window recently. There was some helicopter activity over the area and this was my main target when I looked down at Michigan Avenue, a couple of blocks from us. There were a bunch of women in bridal gowns walking along the street. Looking more closely at the images, the women have red paint on their faces. I have no idea what this meant since I didn’t get one of the flyers they were handing out. They continued down to the bridge and across the river after which I lost track of them. The people around certainly seemed surprised to have a pack of brides (what is the right collective noun for brides – a nightmare?) bearing down on them. That is one of the cool things about this city. Something always is happening!

Bridge Lifts and Boat Passage

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The movement of boats to Lake Michigan is a spring event with the bridges along the Chicago River being opened to allow the boats to get by without having to remove their masts. It happens every spring and they all return each fall. After many years in Chicago, you would think I had got bored with this but I still find it a really cool thing to watch. They move on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I often don’t realize it is happening until I look out of the window and see the bridges up. I decided this year I wanted to see a little more of it.

I got out to the river when the boats were at the join between the north and south branches. This section of the river has a bunch of bridges but they seem to have a pattern of opening them in quick succession with multiple bridges open at once. As they get up to Michigan Avenue, they do each bridge one at a time to minimize the traffic disruption since the cars get backed up while the bridges are open. A Saturday often results in a few more boats and this was no exception.

I am actually cheating a bit here since, when I first started putting together this post, I had been out to watch a run of the boats. Before it is finished, though, another week had passed and another run of the boats took place. The weather was also slightly better. I decided to go out with the fish-eye this time to get something a little different to add to the collection so now the shots are a little more diverse and, hopefully, a little more interesting.

Keeper of the Plains

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It has been a while since we last went to Wichita in Kansas. We have good friends who live there and who we have visited before. However, they have been on the move a lot in recent years and then we had to cancel a trip when things got a little hectic. However, we finally got back down there again. It was a great visit so thanks for having us guys. While we were there, we took a walk along the Arkansas River. Opinion appears to vary on how to pronounce this river depending on which state you are in but the joy of writing rather than speaking is that you won’t know which way I said it so you can’t tell me I am wrong!

There is a split in the river near where we parked and there are a pair of bridges and an island with a large sculpture on it. This is called the Keeper of the Plains. It is a very impressive steel sculpture of a Native American with his arms raised to the skies. Given plenty of time, I would have come back and seen it later in the day. I am not sure if it is illuminated at night but it certainly was very impressive during daylight hours. If you are in the area, do take a look.

And It’s Attached

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You should have seen the video of the move by now. The effort to float the new span into place was pretty impressive. The joints are a tight tolerance to be met but you are moving a large barge with a tug to get them there and those are not the most subtle of tools. however, a combination of the big pushes from the tug and putting lines on to the other moored barges allowed the team to carefully control the position of the barge and get the span in to place.

This was a popular thing. It happened mid morning on a sunny day so plenty of people came out to see it. TV crews were running around near me filming it and I was trying to get along the river to get different angles while still having the time lapse running in one spot (and hopefully nobody stealing the camera on the tripod while I am not looking). The TV camera operator I was chatting to was a lot of fun. They had been told to come out but not told too much. However, they were glad to be watching something fun rather than filming the less happy sides of city news.

With the barge in place, the crews got to work attaching the span. The first task was the bolt the lower spar in to place. The crews were climbing over these area getting the bolts in place. There seemed to be a large contingent of people standing watching this happen. Far more seemed to be watching rather actually doing anything at this point but I imagine a fair number of city people wanted to see such a high profile job get done.

The last step would be to put the remaining structure in place to complete the truss. That had to be done so the span could then support itself.

In to Place She Goes

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The movement of the bridge in to its new location finally went ahead after a lot of waiting on my part. While I was shooting stills, I did set up a second camera to get a time lapse of the move. Below you can see things a lot faster than they were at the time.

Getting Ready for the New Span

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Once the old part of the bridge is cut away, the next step is getting the remaining part of the bridge ready to accept the new structure. The original construction of the bridge involves having the metalwork riveted together. In the run up to the replacement program, it appears that the team have progressively removed the individual rivets in the sections that will be part of the new joint and replace them with bolts. Then, when the structure is cut, it is possible to unbolt the stubs left after the cuts.

With the sections removed, some preparation was necessary for the surfaces that would be part of the new joints with the mating surfaces and the bolt holes being coated. A bunch of cleaning up was also required so the team were moving around these joints on cherry pickers with power tools to clean and prep the surfaces.

The final step was to bolt in place some additional structure that would serve to guide the new span into place when it was floated in to position. All of this took a lot longer than I expected. One visit at night looked like a lot of things we ready. I talked to some of the crew to find out when the move would take place. They thought it would all be done overnight. I debated whether I was prepared to stay up all night to watch it and decided that wasn’t a good idea.

I was glad I made that decision. I awoke early the next morning and headed around and the new span was not yet moved. I was glad to know I hadn’t missed it. Indeed, the prep work was still being finished off. In the end, one of the guys came by and advised of the timing of the lunch break for that shift so I knew that I had time before the move and could head home and get some breakfast!

Meanwhile, there were a few guys cutting up sections of the old span. Not sure what their plan was but the cutting work always looks great at night.

Wells Street Bridge Part Two

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Here we find ourselves repeating some previous posts. Hopefully, this will be slightly different. A while back I posted about the replacement of the south span of the Wells Street Bridge. You can look back at the previous posts here and here. During the previous replacement, I got half of the story. I saw the original span being cut free and moved out of place. Sadly, I had to be out of town for the rest of the week and did not see the new span being put in place and attached.

This time it all happened a bit in reverse for me. I was sure I was going to be around to see the new span put in place. What I hadn’t counted on was that they were a lot quicker removing the original span. By the time I made my first visit, the original section had been cut free and floated off to be moored along the river. I was a bit annoyed at myself but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the second time around they would have found out ways of doing it all a bit more quickly.

One of the things I did find fun was looking at the cuts that had been made to remove the old section. The jagged metal edges look very cool, particularly when you contemplate how long that structure has been sitting across the Chicago River.

And the First Piece is Away!

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As I mentioned before, the first piece was free. I hadn’t planned for a time lapse. I had no idea I was going to time my visit for when this happened, nor that it was going to happen so soon. However, I was there with the camera on a tripod so I manually shot a sequence and cut it together. It is short but you get the idea. I left town shortly after this so missed the new section being put in place. I shall hope to be around when the second span is worked on.

Cutting Through the Night

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I headed back to the work site later the same day to see how things were progressing. I wanted to know how fast things were moving but I also wanted to see the work at night. The cutting torches they are using provide a great shower of sparks but, during the day, it is hard to make that impression since they are not very conspicuous. If they were cutting at night, I figured the effect would be more pronounced. That certainly was the case.

Moreover, they had got a lot further than I had expected. The section was almost totally cut free. It was now rest on the barge ready to be moved when the final cuts were made. As you can see from above, it wasn’t long before this happened. They really had made swift work of the first stage of the task.