Almost Done!

          Our bridge!

          It's almost done!

          Wednesday they were cleaning up, picking up, and hauling out stuff they didn't need anymore.

           The next step was to dig out the old drainpipe and put a new one in. The collar that goes on the end of it was sitting there, brought in the day before.

          Mike and I didn't stay long and on the way home Mike stopped at the end of our driveway and cleaned up the branches that had come down under the snow load. This big beautiful pine lost at least three nice size branches.

          That night was the night of the full moon.

          "Peg, did you take any pictures?" you ask.

          Well, put it this way, I tried. I almost always use my camera in the automatic settings and that's because of the way I take pictures — one-handed and on the fly.

I don't have time to make adjustments in ISO, shutter speed, or f-stop so I never bothered to learn what all that stuff was about.    No matter what I did, prop the camera against something, hold my breath, I couldn't get a clear image of the moon. 

          I'll get my tripod, I thought.

          And I did. I also grabbed my jacket because up until this point I hadn't bothered to put one on — and it was cold out! Even with the tripod, I didn't get anything decent. It appears to me that just the release of the shutter caused enough movement that the pictures came out blurry.

          The next morning I see one of my FB friends got a really nice shot of the moon and I was a teensy bit jealous. He set some of the controls himself, so I thought I'd give that a try.

          I'll Google it and see what to set my camera on.

          Just about then, Mike comes out to where I was sitting in front of my 'puter. "Let's go see how the bridge is coming."

          "Nooo," I whined. "I don't wanna go. You go."

          "Come on, Peg, You wanna see 'em dig the ditch, don't 'cha?"

          He was right. I did. I could Google my camera settings later. When we got there they hadn't started the ditch yet. But we did get to see some trucks dump their loads. They got big rocks dumped on our side and gravel dumped on the other.

          We didn't stay long because we were on our way to town to run an errand.    

          It rained and melted all of our beautiful snow. It rained and it rained and it rained some more. "It's been raining for 36 hours straight," Kurt Aaron, our local weatherman, said at noon on Tuesday. And the rain didn't end until sometime that night.

          "Creeks up," Mike says as we cross the Rainbow Bridge.

          Okay. It's a river. It's the Susquehanna and it is indeed up. "He left his bed," I say.

          The games we play.

          A car sits beside the road, flashers on, front fender smashed.

          "Did he hit a deer?" I asked.

          "I don't know," Mike answered.

          On the way home, the car was still there. "Did you see a deer?" I asked Mike, "Cause I didn't."

          "Nope. Maybe he hit it somewhere else and was driving the car anyway and it broke down there," Mike speculated.

          "Sounds reasonable to me."

          Before we went home, we drove down to the bridge. Mike was watching Greg, on the dozer, push dirt around on the other side of the bridge. On our side, most of the big rocks were where they wanted them, which was the bank, and they'd left one or two in the bucket. I guess they're saving those for something else.

          I was looking around for stuff to take pictures of and spot bolts sticking out the side of the parapet. "I bet those are for the guide rails." 

          Mike put the Jeep in gear, crept forward a little, and I see some stuff sitting on the opposite parapet. That's when I notice there was a plaque embedded in the wall.

          "Hey! There's a plaque!" I exclaimed.

          "What's it say?" Mike wanted to know.

          I zoomed in and took a picture. brought it up on the screen of my camera and made it big enough for me to read.

          I'll tell you what it says in case you can't read it. It says BRADFORD COUNTY BRIDGE NO. 31, then it lists the county commissioners, project coordinator, design partner, contractor, year built, and ends with FUNDED BY ACT 13 – COUNTY IMPACT FEES

          A dump truck comes in and backs around. Duane, the site boss, gets out and gets in the backhoe. He scoops up the dirt that his dad was busy scraping from the road. I watch too.         

          "It opens up!" I exclaimed.

          Later we go back down and see they're digging the ditch.

  

          A couple of hours later the old pipe is out. 

  

          Duane climbed up the side and checked his measurements. 

          And hitched a ride to the other side. "Then I don't have to climb back down in and up the other side," he said.

          Walking back to the Jeep, Mike says, "Take a picture up the pipe."

          I did. But you know what? It kinda looks like the moon pictures I'd been taking.

          Speaking of which...

          I Googled the settings to put my camera on and that night I got the tripod back out, took a flashlight and my jacket and hung out in the back yard for twenty minutes or so. By then my hands were frozen.

          "Peg, didn't you wear gloves?"

          Honestly, I never thought about putting them on.

          I have to use the autofocus because I don't trust my eyes, but no matter what I did I couldn't get my camera to focus on the moon and not the branches it was hiding behind. I thought it would've been a cool shot if I could've gotten it to do that.

          I relocated to a spot where the trees weren't in the way and tried a few dozen more times, changing all kinds of settings. I didn't even know what I was getting until I looked at them on the computer. This is my best shot and it's not all that great.

          The next day, by the time we got there, the new pipes were in, the collar was on, and they were covering it.

          The last little bit they had to fill by hand. 

          They moved the crane off the road and parked it in Vernon's field until they need it for the lower bridge.

          That crane is heavy and tore the hayfield up. 

          But they fixed it.

          

          The only thing left is for the guide rails to be installed and they're coming Monday. Our bridge has an unlimited weight limit now, is two lanes, and depending on how fast the crew is that installs the guide rails, it could be open by Monday afternoon!

          I know I've got plenty of stuff to keep me busy. I know I don't need one more thing to do. However, that doesn't stop me.

          "Peg, what are you going on about now!" you wonder.

          I've added resin casting to the list of things I like to create with.

          My beautiful friend Jody gave me some old jewelry. Some broken and the rest was stuff she didn't want anymore.

          "I just need to downsize," she told me.

          I'm tickled pink to have something new to play with. As I pulled each piece from the bag, I would envision how I could incorporate it into my glass and wirework. Then I found an earring that I thought was perfect for an owl body, then I found his ears and nose on another earring and finally, I found his eyes. Then I decided to cast it in an oval mold along with a lock of Kat's hair. Owls were Kat's favorite critter. And here it is. Now, before you go thinking more highly of this piece than you should, just let me tell you that I used a little visual deception. I 'erased' a couple of three air bubbles. I'm still pretty new to resin casting and there is a learning curve but since it's just for me, it doesn't matter.  

 

           Before I go, before I call this one done, I want to show you one more picture.

          This is the moon picture taken by my Facebook friend, Michael Illo. His camera lens has a little more zoom than mine and he obviously knows where to put his camera's settings.

          By the time I'd gotten permission to show you his picture, I was way past page two, which is where I would've put it in my letter blog. To go back and put it in now would have messed up every single picture after that and would've taken me hours to fix. So, this is the easiest way for me to show you his beautiful moon shot.

          Until next time, know that you are all my loves.

          Let's call this one done!