Life in the Trenches
April 14, 2008
With a sigh of relief, I’m glad to report that our construction zone doesn’t have that man from Mars, Twilight Zone eeriness anymore. They filled all those open trenches with concrete.
After several months of what seemed like daily dirt pushing, the early stages of a building began to appear. On the morning of March 31st, the cement mixers started showing up two at a time. But the coolest part of the day was watching a giant remote controlled arm soaring through the air and dumping concrete all over the job site. Apparently this contraption is known as a truck-mounted boom pump. It uses a remote-controlled articulating robotic arm to distribute the concrete. The guy working the video game-like remote control moved the boom with pinpoint accuracy and even used a little body English to guide the boom. (He sort of reminded me of an old boyfriend who spent way too much time playing video games, creepy.) There were workers inside the trenches, slogging through the wet concrete as they guided and smoothed it around.
I got to thinking, what if I were working the remote and one or two of my co-workers (or that old boyfriend) were in the trench guiding the concrete… they never did find Jimmy Hoffa!
