Bridge plans

I walked into County Engineer Jeff Blue’s office carrying a set of plans.  Jeff was coming in at the same time I was and his hands were full of more stuff than I was carrying.  He was trying to get into a conference room that had a door that was supposed to open like a cabinet door, where you push on it and let go and it springs back unlatched, but it wasn’t working for him because his hands were full.  I had a free hand and gave it a try and got it to open.  I hadn’t made an appointment so I realized there was a chance he might not have time to look over my plans right then, but he said he did, so I opened them out on the table.

It was a full sized set and over an inch thick when I laid it out flat.  I wanted to get directly to the layout of a bridge, but the first several pages were full color cartoons – Goofy, Donald Duck, and all sorts of nonsense.  I tried to flip them out of the way quickly, but I’m sure he saw them and wondered what they had to do w/ the project, as did I.

The plans showed a bridge on

Mapleturn Road

in Morgan County that had partially collapsed and was now open to one way traffic.  Stop signs and signs that said, “TAKE TURNS” were posted on either side of the bridge.  We discussed that it was unfortunate that this bridge hadn’t been replaced when we built the federal aid bridge right next to it several years ago.  The creek the bridge spanned ran along the south side of the road until it came to the bridge, then crossed under and continued along the north side.  The new bridge plans had a 27 degree skew and we both agreed there needed to be more skew.

I went back outside and it was raining.  I walked to the edge of the sidewalk where there was a hole about 4 feet in diameter that had rock and brick sides and provided access to a lower level.  I jumped down and stepped a couple times off the rocks jutting out that worked like steps and came to a lower level and went inside the building.  I noticed for the first time that I was wearing a raincoat that was made of 2 inch cut Astroturf.  The floor of the room was covered with puddles where the rain had leaked in.  There were bunches of kids playing.  Some were running around trying to stay out of the water and some were specifically trying to get in it.  I jumped over a puddle and realized that if I turned horizontal while I jumped I could float across the room.  So I jumped and floated to the far side where Jon Reichard was sitting.  I stopped and talked w/ him a minute about the bridge and the rain and then went outside.