There are people who would kill to do what I did yesterday; they're a lot nerdier than I am. I got to go on the pier top of the Gig Harbor-side tower of the in-progress new Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I believe in practice it is being called the third bridge because the first one, Galloping Gertie, went down a scarce number of months after it was put up in 1940 and the second Tacoma Narrows Bridge, no matter how reliable it has been in the ensuing 65 years, will never replace the first, dead bridge in the memories of local residents. What is it, a red-headed stepchild, people? It's a bridge, it serves a function (crossing the Narrows) and it's done it longer than its predecessor. Motion to let it be the Narrows Bridge.
Anyway, going on the bridge requires an escort and a lack of fear of heights, because I had to go on the catwalk under the bridge. Let me tell ya, the sides of the cliffs are pretty steep, and in the space of a few paces, I was way above the sea. This didn't bother me. Lee, the freelance photographer, he was bothered. He's an EMT and a small plane pilot and this was worrisome to him.
To be fair, Lee later told me he associates the bridge with death. As an EMT, he has not only responded to accidents on the bridge, but to jumpers. He said he's seen more than one person go over and the second after they've made that final action, he has seen the recognition in their eyes that they have made an awful, terrible mistake. Which I do not in the least doubt.
You have to understand just how tall this bridge is. I know that the towers are a little over 500 feet tall, so the middle strut is somewhere below 250 feet (I'm guessing 210 — you'll see why below). That's the height of a 20 story building (give or take). There are birds beneath you. You don't just see the white caps, you see the tidal motion of the Narrows (which, even when it's neither going in or out much, is a pretty extreme pull). You can see little bitty boats hauling big sledges of timber. It's way the heck up there. And all that is between you and it on the catwalk is
Also under the bridge, you really get a sense of how crazy long it is. It just keeps on stretching and stretching. There are so many green steel crossbeams anchoring it, it's nuts. It's almost half a mile, but when you're driving you don't know that.
So I had to walk out over the water for about a sixth of a mile. Then I had to go down 21 flights of stairs to the pontoons that connect the stairs to the new piertop. Going down is pretty easy.
Now, as high up as I had been, I was talking to one of the tower crane operators. For his job, not only does he have to sit way up in the air (about 500 feet now, and there will soon be another "jump" to 610) but in order to get there he has to ride an elevator to the "birdcages," which are enclosed, protective structures in which the concrete crew does its magic, then get out onto a bridge that spans from tower leg to tower leg and climb up the tower crane's ladders to get to his "office." If you think that takes gumption, he also has to haul up the tower crane bits that get fitted into the tower when workers are making the "jumps." That's kind of hard to imagine, so picture this: You're building a Lego tower and you want to make it taller, so instead of adding on to the top, you add on in the middle. You basically have to break it in half. That's what happens when the crane gets a "jump."
Dude sees everything. He is so high up.
Which leads me to my next point. The PR lady at the construction company and the engineer in charge of the superstructure (so far, I am understanding that to mean the cables) have led me to believe that I will have the opportunity to survey the cable-spinning work up close and personal. That means I will be able to go up on what they are calling the catwalk.
This will not be a catwalk like the one across the bridge. This will not be flat. It will rise from ground level to the middle of the top of the towers. This will not be a metal grate. It will be a metal mesh, and, as the PR lady from the department of transportation has mentioned, will have boards across it. I asked her if that meant Indiana-Jones-style bridge and she said possibly. I asked if people have to clip in with a harness and a caribbeaner. Apparently not. But how Indiana Jones can this catwalk be if it goes 500 feet into the air?
So I'm really jazzed about making this climb. I look at this not only as a future adventure, but also as a way to get back at a childhood memory of tragedy.
The year, 1982 or 3. I forget. It was a hot summer day and the family was going to Sesame Place, the Pennsylvania theme park based on the revolutionary children's television program that introduced me to Cookie Monster.
At the time, Sesame Place was pretty tame. I don't recall that they even had a rollercoaster to speak of. This was a place for kids that were still learning their numbers. From The Count! The rides were not intense.
However, there was this one thing, a huge net that went up in levels over the rest of the park. There was a net tube that went between two poles way up over the tall rides.
I never made it that far. I got about 20 feet off the ground and freaked out and started crying. I was pretty young, and I yelled at my dad, who, in his typical style, didn't appear to notice that he was climbing on past me. He tried to chipper me into keeping on going, but it wasn't going to happen. I wanted to turn around, but there was this tide of people coming up the net. I mean, you might have thought they were big rats or something. Big rats that would run me over without a second thought. I might have gotten a "get out of the way" comment. At the time, I just thought that's how people were; now, I'm hoping there's a little more compassion for the scared 8-year-olds of the world. Dad helped me to the side, where I clung to a post, and, because the human rats would have overrun him, too, he had to finish the net obstacle course before he could find the poor overworked teenaged boys that had to carry me down.
Anyway, going up on the catwalk might mitigate something that happened to me more than 20 years ago. Or not. I'm pretty sure it will be cool. But I'd better not invest too much or it won't happen.
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