Diving the rest of the bridges in Wisconsin

On this last dive trip to check out bridges up north before the snow flies, the smallest and most unassuming structure of the bunch ended up providing the most notable lesson of the week - don't let your gaurd down, assume things or get bored or you'll make a mistake.  This unimpressive structure had only a pair of footings in shallow water in a nondescript stream with no discernible flow.  It was just after lunch, so feeling lethargic from the morning's dives and food, I suggested it'd be a good training dive for our newer dive inspector.  Probes along the bottom of the sheet pile with a level rod revealed no hint of problems , and about 9 or 10 feet of water at the most.  Since guidelines for the project dictated the PE-Diver has to dive at least 50% of inwater elements for each bridge and this one had two small footers, the new guy ended up running the console topside and I ended up in the water anyway.   I groped along in the murk not expecting much of interest, thinking that I was already hungry for my Subway bag of chips I'd saved.  Lo and behold, on the deeper of the two footings, the bottom of the sheet piling around about half of the circumference was exposed above the bed about 6 inches or so.  Probes underneath revealed a significant void that penetrated back into the original, deteriorted column.  The engineer standing on the footing above me reported noticeable vibrations with passing traffic.  We ended up with a total of three dives on the footing, with two different PE's groping and probing around down there.  Just goes to show you - gottta stay sharp, even on the eazy-cheezy ones.

Well jolly good for the Brits

Sure wish we could pull our heads out and get some real wind farms going, especially offshore.  We're still arguing over the first one (maybe... Cape Wind).  2200 divers needed... 3800 turbines by 2016.  All those engineers and techs too.  NICE!

Petting gators in FL

This is actually from a trip several months ago - inspecting bridge in Florida and came upon this guy.  They're actually quite docile.... when they're dead!

Bridge inspections in Wisconsin

I'm Gumbi damnit!

For coastal work, even up in NYC, fall diving in October is still awesome - the air is cool, the water still in the 60's and you can still wear a wetsuit.  Unfortunately, the rivers of the upper midwest are already in the 50's, as is the air temps... so break out the Gumbi suits!

Port facility inspections in Alaska

 We woke up on the boat in Bartlett Cove to see and hear this huge sea lion thrashing some good size fish around about a dozen feet off the rail.

 Taking a break from report writing during the day-long journey up to Glacier Bay from Gustavus.

 Up the fjord about as far as you can go without breaking out the dinghy, which the guys soon did...

 Sunset in the Auke Bay area near Juneau - amazing..

 Apparently bald eagles are like pigeons up there to the locals - they're everywhere.  Still very impressive and intimidating when they're staring down at you on the dock..

Ah, home sweet home for 2 weeks...