Rapid Bridge Replacement

Talk on Ottawa radio and television today, is centered around some construction taking place in the Nation's capital this weekend. The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) is replacing a bridge on the 417 Queensway, and is attempting to use state of the art technology to complete this task in only 15 hours.

FIFTEEN HOURS, ten plus five, under two working days merged together... can you believe it?

Apparently this type of bridge replacement is the first of it's kind in Canada. According to various news sources, the actual replacement bridge is being built off-site and... starting tomorrow at 8:00 pm, the 417 East and West will be shutdown, the old bridge will be cut out, the new bridge will be dropped into it's hole, secured into place... all before 12 noon on Sunday.

Unbelievable!

The project management team, Mammoet, will use heavy lift rapid replacement technology to do the work. This piece of technology will allow work, that would normally required two years, to be completed in under 2 regular working days.

Perhaps this is not as exciting to you, but being the daughter of a man who oversaw road and bridge work for the majority of his career, I am rather intrigued with the entire process.

I am pretty sure when Timbo gets the low-down on this, he'll probably need a stiff drink! Seriously... if technology of this kind was available and affordable 25 years ago, my Dad may have been available to attend a few more of my baseball games and figure skating lessons!! AND, had this technology been used in Northern Ontario, we might not have had to take our summer vacations in places like Wawa, Hornepayne, or Marathon!!!

On the other hand, we might also have been in the poor house, as it appears that technology like this is eliminating the need for human resources, and if his pay cheque was only worth 2 days of work, instead of 2 years... I am pretty sure I wouldn't have been wearing Beaver Canoe jogging suits and Nike Air's the majority of my young life!

The cool thing about the whole project, is that the MTO has setup a webcam so that interested parties can view the bridge replacement project from the comfort of their own home. They have even setup bleachers in the Island Park area as they are expecting thousands of nosey citizens to be live on the scene to watch the all of the action.

I personally won't be vying for a seat on bleacher's, but I will probably check out the webcam a few times just to see if this project really goes off without a hitch! The interesting part will be if something does go wrong, the 417 is the major road artery for all of Ottawa, so... if the project takes longer than expected, head's will roll somewhere, as this road closure will create numerous headaches if the project carries over to Monday morning.

Here's hoping all goes smoothly for everyone invovled. I guess we will have to wait and see how it all unfolds....

It's a whole new world.

This weekend my brother-in-law hooked us up with a Bell dish, and a PVR (for the dinosaurs that's a Personal Video Recorder). The PVR is a whole new world for me. Last year at this time when we got our HD TV, PC wanted to get the Roger's PVR, and I threw down my wife power and said we did not need a PVR, the HD TV was enough at that point.

I think it was mostly the price of renting a PVR every month that had me up in arms over the whole thing.... but had PC actually brought it home and had me try it, I think I could have been convinced that it was necessary to have one! Nevertheless, 13 months later, here we are with a PVR, and I AM LOVING IT.

Take for instances that fact that I love the show The Hills on MTV but it also comes on at the same time as What About Brian on Monday nights. I usually watch What About Brian, and then try to catch The Hills on a repeat airing on Saturday or Sunday. Lately I've been away on the weekends, so I've missed a few episodes... but now with the PVR, I don't have to miss another show. You press one button and it automatically records the show every time its on. Then, (and this is by far the best part)... you come home turn on the TV, press another button and you can fast forward through all the commercials. It's the best invention since sliced bread... REALLY!

Saturday night I wanted to watch SNL because Carrie Underwood was performing, but I was too tired to stay up past midnight... so I just hit PVR, and when I woke up the next morning, I fast forwarded to the end and saw both her performances... it was pure satisfaction let me tell you!

I think its going to come in handy on Thursday nights too when PC is reffing, and I am curling. Usually, I want to watch Grey's, ER and he wants CSI, Shark, etc. - now we can PVR all of the shows and watch them whenever we want, without having to argue about whether one of us taped the other person's shows.

It's great... and what's even better is that I can automatically ask it to tape Y&R and General Hospital for me EVERYDAY. I don't exactly know how I will fit all of this extra tv-time into my life... I might have to sacrifice cooking and cleaning until I adjust to the new found technology, but hey, its definitely worth it!