Bridge Inspections Gone Wild!!

Let me preface with - I look absolutely ridiculous in a hard hat, safety vests are impossible to look cool in, and fall protection harnesses are incredibly uncomfortable - and apparently one of my thighs is bigger than the other and it changes based on the day. Haha.. Otherwise, my bridge inspection tour (errr - 2 bridges) has been mildly successful. I guess if you look at it in the fact that I never had to test my fall protection harness, then it was extremely successful.

All in all, I have spent about 2.5 weeks inspecting bridges. The first one, I mostly sat under the bridge on the catwalk (and yes, I spent about 90% of my time trying to not sing "I do my little turn on the catwalk/yeah on the catwalk...") while my coworkers were inside inspecting.

Took a little bit of time to get comfortable walking along the catwalk when you can see straight through the walk. It gives a slight feeling of vertigo, but it went away after a few hours.

I was only there the first 4 days to make sure that in the confined space (i.e. the 10'x7' to 15'x7' box beams) the air quality didn't make them pass out. Luckily, everyone was safe and I got in some good guide book reading for our Europe trip.

This is the door opening to the box beams. There were 4 for each line of beams, and there were 4 beams. So, I sat at these holes for 4 days while my coworkers were inside. I had bruises in places I had never had bruises.

When I showed up to the first bridge inspection, I got my first look at the snooper. It's essentially a cherry-picker/man-lift, except instead of going up, it goes off the side of the bridge, down, and then around and under. It was terrifying to think that I was going to be getting in that basket, but what they didn't tell me, is that to get on the catwalk, I would need to leave the relative "safety" of the snooper, climb up and over the catwalk railing, and then just be there about 40'-50' in the air. If they had told me that before getting me under the bridge though, I probably would have said "I'm good guys... I think I'll just stay up here on the deck". As it was, I was already there and didn't have much of a choice.

Here is the snooper before we got in.

This is the snooper in action, to give an idea of how it operates. It's pretty jerky, and after you get off, you kind of have the feeling of sea-legs.

On Thursday, once I was feeling pretty comfortable walking along the catwalk and generally being a troll under the bridge, we needed to be picked up. The problem: there is only room for 3 people in the snooper. That meant, the 3 of us under the bridge needed to be picked up in shifts. We had to climb down a 10' ladder to the top of the pier (yeah, as in the top of the pier.... however many 10's of feet in the air... and we can't tie off since our lanyards aren't big enough for it). I was super nervous. We had to go up in shifts. Since Linda (another inspector) was actually going to stay in the snooper and keep inspecting, Dennis and I got to go up first. I felt so bad leaving her at the top of the pier while we went top side. If that had been me, I would definitely be freaking out. We left her tied off to the ladder, sitting the middle of the pier.

So glad that's not me! But it could have been. I just got the first pick up.

The second bridge that we worked on was just down the river. This time, I was actually in the lift, on the truss above the bridge. That means that I was going to be 60' in the air... I was a little nervous about how it was going to go. I have a little bit of nervousness with heights, but I wasn't going to be sure of how I would react until I was up there. Turns out, I'm much more comfortable in the air, than under. Who knew?

The bridge. The through truss is what I was working on this time.

The view from one of the higher points of the bridge. It's the Illinois River below us. Lots of barge traffic, but other than the main channel, it's only a couple of feet deep.

The deck below, just to give an idea of how high we were up. We had to look at each of those steel members of the truss. I think I might have found one of the more monotonous jobs of my life. W.O.W. 5 full days of going up, down, across.. up, down, across...

This is the last day in the 60' lift. I was finally relaxed in the lift, hence I am not holding tightly onto the edge of the basket with white knuckles, so that was definitely an improvement.

We were able to get to most of the bridge with the 60' lift, but for the highest peaks we needed to use a 125' lift. I went up the first time, but with all the bracing and everything else made it a tough squeeze. So, they decided to put someone on the ground to act as a bit of a traffic calming measure and to just have an extra set of eyes on the ground to make sure the wheels didn't go over the line... luckily that was me! The tall lift wasn't making me nervous with the height, it was the fact that we needed to thread it through the holes in the bracing and going back and forth to make it to the crest of the truss. I was not about to get stuck up at the top of this bridge. At one point, when they were checking one of the higher members, the basket spazzed out and tried to dump my coworker and the operator. It was siting at a 30 degree angle, with them just bracing themselves against the railing. It took about 20 minutes for them to get the lift to get moving again and finally put them back on solid ground. Needless to say, I did not get back in the lifts after that. Ha.

One of the hardest parts of the inspection for me is that we don't take a lunch break so that we can get in a solid 8-9 hours of work. There aren't any nearby bathrooms (unless your a guy, which on things like this is SOOO not fair) so I don't want to be the one to make everyone take a break so that I can go to a gas station. That means that I don't drink much water. I was lucky for the first inspection that it was 60-70 degrees, but the second inspection had heat indices in the 90's and 100's which made it much more intense. You know it's a problem when you drink 2 gatorades, 2 small waters, and 1 large water, and you don't need to go to the bathroom for 15 hours. Ha. I definitely drank more after that so that I wasn't at risk of passing out.

So - that's my story of how I became a bridge inspector. Hopefully the rest are few and far between. But I'm not going to lie - aside from the fashion disaster that construction work is for me, I still feel like a bad ass. :)