sand toys, size XXXXX-large

The beach replenishment project has reached my block. I spent a good part of the afternoon today watching a bunch of guys and gals from NJ, Louisiana and Oklahoma playing with awesomely huge sand toys.  And I took pictures, of course. 

The way it works is, a boat (maybe ship, bigger than a boat?) with dredging arms goes way out into the ocean (probably not WAY out, or it wouldn't be able to reach the sand), digs up a load of sand, stores it in the boat, then comes and pumps it out onto the beach here.  The equipment on the beach - earth movers and shovels and such - receive the sand and spread it around.  There's a big pipe that runs from a buoy to the shore, the boat attaches to that, and at the shore end of the pipe there's a filter basket contrivance, to catch the bombs and artillery shells that come up with the sand.  Those are taken into custody by a bomb disposal crew, who lug them off to Fort Dix to blow them up.  There's ordnance in the sand because they are taking it from off the Fort Hancock area, and that was a proving ground of some sort back in WWI & II.  Which means the army shot a whole lot of ordnance into the ocean around here, and most of it is still there.

The boat takes about two hours to go out, dredge up material, and come back to disperse it.  I was talking to the site supervisor for a while, gleaning all this info (my Mom never taught me not to talk to strangers, probably because she does the same thing).  He was here for the last replenishment, in 1995, and also was here for the rebuilding of the sea wall in the early 90s.  I'm glad he's back.  The beach will be twice as wide when they're done as it is right now.  He did say they are not building dunes this time, so I'm not sure how that's going to work.  Tho usually dunes kind of grow by themselves, from what I've seen.

Seems like the state is paying for this, obviously with FEMA money.  The state project will run up to the north end of Sea Bright, because beyond that is federal territory, and as the supervisor told me, the feds do not move sand.

Here's the dredger.

The equipment on the beach.  The red structure with the blue umbrella in front of it is a spare filter.

 

 

Here you can see the pipe spewing sand, which is quite wet, and the two earth movers shaping the new edge of the beach.  They have to be careful not to go too far, so the equipment doesn't sink or get overrun with ocean.

Closer shot of one of the earth movers, with the dredger in the background.

The cage as they were shutting down the pipe so the ship could go get more sand.

Looks like he's coming to get me!

Of course, people are complaining because the replenishment makes sections of the beach not available for use while the work is going on.  But the guy I was talking to said they have to get it done now, the situation is such that the work can't wait, so people just have to grin and bare it.  Which is what people tend to do at the beach anyhow.

Oy, what a weekend

My kids and granddog came up for the weekend, and we worked on all sorts of stuff, a lot of it green leafy vegetation in front of my house.  Now there is a rather large pile of disconnected formerly green leafy vegetation in the back of my house, waiting for my handy dudes to pick up and take somewhere for disposal.  The handy dudes also were here hard at work, painting the front porch and working on the wall in the front of the property.  So it's beginning to look nice outside as well as in.

The dogs, of course, had their usual issues, not really wanting to play, and by Sunday morning getting a little snarly with each other.  Mostly they get along ok, but as they get tireder, teeth sometimes are brandished.  Just like little kids. 

Meanwhile, I somehow did something to hurt my left foot, so now I am hobbling about, the foot hurts, the calf hurts, the knee hurts, and if this keeps up, I suspect the ache will continue moving north.  As one of my Mom's neighbors commented, it sucks getting old.  Not that I'm doing that. 

When I am back to walking more comfortably, I'll go across the street and take some pictures of the progress.  Hobbling like I am at the moment, crossing the street can be difficult, I'm likely to get creamed by some idiot bennies in a Mercedes or Porsche.

I'm tired, and aside from the foot issue, my arms are a tad sore, but that's just the result of a lot of use of the electric hedge trimmer.  I actually managed to not cut thru the cord, for a change.  I've made a lot of sparks in my gardening (or un-gardening) career.  I also no longer have a bush that has curly little thingies on it that grab the cord and hold it so it's easier to chop.

Still doing laundry, got off to a very late start on that today.  I might be able to stay awake long enough to fold and hang everything that's in the dryer right now....

Pablo just went somewhere with Grandma, so I'm going to go enjoy some of the lemon wine my kids made....ciao~

I received a suggestion

One of my peeps mentioned that I am spending a lot of time talking about trains and how bad our transit system is.  That may actually be true.  So let's change the subject, and go back to the question of bridges.  Some of my readers might have noticed I have a thing for bridges.  It's a long running romance, let's say.  Bridges have always fascinated me. 

I remember when I was a little kid - we still had the '49 Ford then - going from our summer cottage in Silverton to Seaside Heights, the Route 37 bridge was still made of wood.  It was very narrow,  just one skinny lane in each direction, and the road surface was wooden planks, kind of like a board walk.  I was always nervous that it might break while we were on it, and we would splash into Barnegat Bay - which wouldn't be much of an issue in terms of water, it's not very deep.  But the crunch when that heavy Ford hit the bottom could be an issue.   We would all be flattened, I think.  Not exactly the way I envisioned ending my summer. 

At some point, they built a real bridge, concrete and steel, three lanes so you could have two at a time going whichever way the traffic was heavier.  It was still a while before the smaller bridge from Pelican Island to Seaside was redone.  It had a partial wooden deck for a while after the big bridge was replaced.   How much time passed, I can't say, I was a kid, and had no sense of time.  Since then, a second bridge was added next to the big one, so last I checked there were 3 lanes in each direction.  Back when the bridge was wooden, it was also a drawbridge, so some days traffic would have to sit and wait for boat traffic to pass.  The new bridges are higher, so no more drawbridge on the taller one, no more sitting and watching boats go by - or even better, getting out of the car to hang on the rail and watch. And of course, no more bridge operators in their little booths. 

These are the latest iteration of the Route 37 bridge between Toms River and Seaside Heights.  The shorter one is the older one, of course.  It actually is a drawbridge, still, but I haven't been down there in several years, so I had to look that up (and I wouldn't even consider going until summer is well over).  Seems to me the original wooden bridge was flat all the way across the bay, with the bascule (aka drawbridge) in the center.  I found an article from the Asbury Park Press that says the taller bridge was built in 1970.  It's called the J. Stanley Tunney Bridge.  Its shorter partner is the Thomas A. Mathis Bridge, and considering a friend of mine who is five years younger than me doesn't remember the bridge ever being wooden, the Mathis must have been built in the early 1960s, maybe.  It says in Wikipedia that it was built in 1950, but I can't buy that, as I have been on the old wooden bridge and I was not born yet in 1950.  I remember crossing it in the '49 Ford, but not in the '57 Ford, which was its successor.   

I haven't been able to find any pictures of the wooden bridge. I'd be interested to see if any exist.  This site has some old pictures of Seaside:  http://www.discoverseasideheights.com/history/toms-river-bridge  Their discussion of the railroads is also fascinating, and be sure to check out the carousel, which is still in operation, after surviving Hurricane Sandy.

Thinking about it, my friend doesn't remember Wild West City, either.  It was an early theme park near the intersection of Hooper Avenue and Fisher Boulevard.  We fondly referred to it as Mosquito City.  I suspect the mosquitoes were one of the main reasons it didn't last too long.  There apparently are Wild West Cities elsewhere, but that particular one is long gone.

trains, trains and more trains

This morning we got to somewhere around North Elizabeth and slowed to a crawl.  Crept into Newark, eventually, and I got an email alert that there was a "medical emergency" somewhere in the system, which was supposedly slowing us down.

What they didn't mention was that the "patient" was actually the electric lines that give juice to the trains.  We got past Newark and into no-man's-land, aka the Meadowlands, and stopped, then the lights flickered and went out.  As did the a/c. 

Eventually someone announced that Amtrak was having low voltage problems on the catenary lines, and the dispatcher was relaying that info to someone who could maybe fix it.

We sat for about a half hour, though the lights and a/c came back on somewhat sooner.  Then we had to crawl the rest of the way to NY Penn, since there was a line of stuck trains that all had to get going again, were all behind schedule, and couldn't all go at one time because of there only being one track through the tunnel, as I've mentioned before.

I finally got to the office about 9.53.  I usually get here at 9.10.  Better late than never?  At least nobody went postal on the train, and the quiet car stayed pretty quiet through the wait, which is totally amazing.

I must admit, I was vaguely disappointed to learn the real cause of the delay.  I had imagined that the hamster running our train had died (I always thought they had hamsters on those little wheels generating the electricity), and they were sending the conductors out into the swamp to try to catch some rats as replacements. 

No, I really haven't lost my mind entirely.  I've just been riding NJT much too much.

can't resist

I don't remember where I got this, but I love the sentiment:

ok, since I'm not getting anything useful done anyhow....

Pablo with his ducky who accidentally wound up in the laundry.  Nice clean ducky, and he still squeaks!

The collection of balls that have resurfaced in the process of fixing and painting the house.  They were all under the furniture or somewhere.  Pablo doesn't chase balls much, so I think a lot of these are leftovers from Cid.

This is the new beach access, complete except noone has been back to clean up the debris.  Some nice scrap lumber there.

The deck.  Notice, no seats.

Going down to the beach.  Different than it used to be, it's got a platform that's a step lower than the deck, then the stairs.

Beach looking southeast.  No dunes, no plants, part of a jetty sticking out.  Also no people, but it's cloudy and has been raining a bit here and there.

Beach looking northeast.  A couple of hardy plants are coming back on their own.  

Interestingly, the beach is being swept clean by the wind and tides, there are very few shells, no driftwood and no sea glass.  I've never seen it so empty of stuff.  We're supposed to be getting replenishment sometime, soon, I hope, and the dunegrass project will plant new dunes, and maybe it will start looking like it used to look.  Still, after what Sandy did, it's amazing there's any beach left at all.  Replenishment and dune building do work, it took almost 20 years for the storms and the tides to take away what was put there by the last replenishment project.  And nobody really knows for sure what Sea Bright would look like today if we didn't have the dunes there to help protect us. 

the more I work, the behinder I get

Just looked at the time, it's already afternoon and I feel like I've gotten nothing done.  Except going to the post office, the bank, and the grocery store, and buying gas for the car, and opening all the mail, and calling several people....

I guess life expands to fill the time available.  I need to start making reservations with myself so I can have actual time to sit down and do real work. 

Hot-ish and very very humid here today, the sun is trying to come out, but while I was zooming around doing things this morning, it was raining in isolated spots.  Local showers, literally.  It's been cooler lately, so it feels crummy being back at hot-ish and the humidity is a killer. 

Maybe over the weekend I can get some work done, and put up some pictures, I've been doing random pictures of odd things and haven't had a chance to upload them anywhere.  I'm so tired by the time I get home in the evenings, I can't do much more than fall into bed, then I can't fall asleep.  Need to get back to something regular and normal.  Anything regular and normal.  Tired of the new normal, give me back my old normal.  PLEASE!!!!

Cid

Cid

February 2000 - August 4, 2009

actual facts

A local paper reported that yesterday there were three suicides by train, each on a different line of NJ Transit.  Probably a record for a 24-hour period.

more on trains and transportation

One of my associates on FB commented the other day that the US has the worst rail system in the world.  I'd probably tend to agree with that statement, except that locally, at least, we haven't had any major accidents in a while, or maybe ever (as far as I an aware), like trains going off the rails for going way too fast on a curve, or trains running into each other head-on. 

That being said, yesterday afternoon's transportation situation was interesting.  At about the same time as there was a spill of something or other on the helix coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel on the NJ side, closing the road entirely, NJ Transit had what they euphemistically refer to as a "trespasser incident," plus a "medical emergency," which pretty much bollixed up the rail system for a few hours.

Now, in case you can't tell, a "trespasser incident" usually involves an individual being on the tracks for some reason and getting run over by a train.  I wonder if the "medical emergency" might have indicated that they for a change didn't kill the trespasser?  Have to look in the local news today and see if there are any details available.

Our trains are awful.  They're very old equipment, subject to frequent breakdowns and partial to total failure, but these issues generally simply make the trains exceedingly uncomfortable (they are sufficiently uncomfortable to begin with), or make them stop dead on the tracks and not go anywhere until someone does something to fix or replace the ailing machinery.  Often we have electrical issues, or switch issues, or the Portal Bridge won't lock after it's been opened for boat traffic. The second worst is when a train gets stuck in the tunnel, because since there is only one tunnel containing only two tracks, you instantly get an issue with putting trains thru it in both directions at once.  And when one train is delayed, it has the obvious cascading effect, which worsens as the blockage persists.

The worst is the dreaded "trespasser incident," when the resulting mess has to be cleaned up, investigated, and the train crew removed for questioning, counseling, or whatever else they do to those people when they screw up.  Tho in my opinion, running over a person who chooses to place him or her self in the path of a train is not at all the engineer's fault or error.  It's an unavoidable obstacle that causes a huge mess.  One evening I was on a train that ran over a human, and we were all stuck on the train for three hours while the official activities took place, until some genius actually considered getting the passengers off, since we had no function to serve aside from becoming progressively more agitated and anxious to leave.

Can we call it dysfunctional?  Sure, let's do that. 

Even so, in my opinion it still beats driving.

tunnels and stuff

Wrote this the other nite, it needed edits I wasn't able to do on the tablet, so here it is now:

I was almost asleep when some inconsiderate asshole parked outside and offloaded a passel of screeching children.  So now I am wide awake, and the brain is running amok.

Talking about tunnels earlier, I remember when I was a little kid and my older sister was in elementary school, she did a project about the Lincoln Tunnel, which involved building a model of it.  She "borrowed" a couple of trucks from me, which I had gotten on a trip to AC, at the Mr. Peanut store.   Supposedly I would get them back when the project came home.  Well, it never did come home, and I never got my trucks back.  Last I saw them was several years later, when I had to go into a storage room at school, and saw the tunnel project, still sitting there with my trucks in it.  The nun in charge of my class wouldn't let me take the project, or my trucks, home.   For all I know,  it's probably still there, 50-some years later.  And I'm psychically scarred for life by the experience.

 Of course, I did learn from the project that the tunnel doesn't lie on the riverbed, in the water.  I used to worry that the tunnel might spring a leak, and get full of water.  Not gonna happen.   I suppose the train tunnel is similarly buried under the riverbed.  So while I'm stuck in a train sitting still in the tunnel, the potential for drowning is slim.  However, based on where we were stopped this morning, about two levels below street grade, we were actually not under the river, but under a building.   That could be rather messy, if the building came down on the tracks for some reason.  Heavy stuff.

 It gets weird when I ought to be sleeping and get interrupted like this.  All sorts of odd stuff comes up.