A Look at the Champlain Bridge

A Look at the Champlain Bridge

In keeping with this blog's mission of serving in part as a photographic supplement to the printed Rutland Herald, I thought I'd post some of the pictures I've taken during trips this fall to the Champlain Bridge, also known as the Crown Point Bridge, that connects Addison, Vermont with Crown Point, New York. Or at least it used to. This is the bridge you've been reading about and hearing about because it is in such bad shape that it's closed for safety's sake. Before that, it was possible to walk out onto the closed lane and see the structure as never before. And, as the photos of deterioration will show, maybe never again.

See all that rust staining on the pier? It's worse close up. Ask yourself: would you buy a used car with rust like this? Would you have the undercarriage checked out to see if it would need repairs that would cost more than the price of the old clunker?

The truss members look like they could use a truss.

I leave it to you to decide whether the next picture indicates a lack of basic maintenance or not.

Walking on it, a truck would make it shake, and even an SUV would make it tremble. A key point re the closing, for any engineering types: it wasn't just that some of the concrete piers had deep cracks, it was the fact that the expansion joints, which were meant to give the bridge operational flexibility, had locked up.

An unexpected pleasure of being on the bridge was having a good view of boat wakes. Each has a personality that fits the craft making it. This guy's testosterone-fueled sportster was skipping over the waves.

Could there be a ferry at the site, at least temporarily? One local said there had been one, before the bridge. The boat landing under the bridge looks like it has the beginnings of a landing. The boat in the picture is a good example of why there won't be a pontoon bridge unless it has a way of letting waterborne traffic continue along the international waterway: a knowledgeable fisherman said this was a yacht carrying snowbirds south; in the spring, he said, they will all come back to to their Champlain summer residences in their boats.

I'll close with a view of the Champlain monument in the park across the highway from the Crown Point ruins in New York. This was, after all, the 400th anniversary of the "discovery" of the lake by Samuel de Champlain, whose statue is on the monument.

What's this? What does it have to do with Lake Champlain? Well, this was the bottom of a lake, or sea, many many moons ago. It's the Omya marble quarry in Middlebury--I'll have pictures from their open house, always a festive occasion (seriously), in another posting. Meanwhile, consider this: as part of the open house, they have a 480-foot--long trail that describes what happens to make marble over a 480-million-year period. Step forward one foot and you've gone a million years. An 80-year human lifespan takes less than the width of a human hair.

This, too, shall pass.

THE GATE TO OLD AGE

THE GATE TO OLD AGE

        I have a college classmate, a sometime Benson resident, who is a sculptor known for creating gates. Not the garden gate kind, but stand-alone portals more to areas of meaning that physical territory. The next time I see him or contact him, I’m going to suggest a Gate to Old Age: the crosspiece would be the human skeleton’s pelvic area, including both hips, and the support would be two crutches instead of legs.

       The biggest reason I haven’t been blogging more often this year is my back—or at least I thought it was my back. Anyone who has seen me limping and gimping around, hitching and hobbling like an old farmer dragging himself to Town Meeting, knows what I’m talking about. In a hundred ways, it keeps me from going the extra step to get things done, and they pile up, sometimes literally, especially in a small office. Mine is about nine feet square; for two days now I’ve been trying to get to the other side of it, and I’m not there yet.

       I went to Brandon chiropractic doctor Chuck Foster, who has always been able to help me with my back, and this time the adjustment lasted about 100 feet from the office door and BANG the pain was back. It wasn’t his fault, though, as I found out last week from Dr. Eric Benz here in Middlebury, a back specialist.

       X-rays showed the back to be a bit twisted out of line, but not too bad. The hips, on the other hand, were shot. Massive arthritis, so bad there wasn’t any gap at all between the ball and socket in the joint, just fuzzy white. “It’s sort of a good news-bad news thing,” he said, beginning a summation that ended with “You need two hip replacements.”

       I answered, “In other words, hip hip, but no hooray?”

       I had heard of them, but had never thought much about them, because that was for old people. Old? By next year, when it will be possible to take the time to have them (winter is coming too fast to do it now), I’ll be 62, and eligible for Social Security.

       It isn’t the whole hip that gets replaced, it’s the ball part of the ball-and-socket joint. I tell my covered bridge acquaintances (I wrote a book called Covered Bridges of Vermont) “I’m afraid I need a little Glulam,” that being an artificial wood product that covered bridge preservationists want to keep out of the wooden bridges as much as possible.

       On the good side (aside from not needing back surgery), Benz said it’s his favorite operation, because almost always it goes well and gives the person a whole new life. Son Damon, now operations manager at the First Avenue music club in Minneapolis, emailed back “That good about your back, but whack about your hip, pop. At least once it's over and done with, you'll be able to move about relatively pain free, right?” Brother Joe, a year younger, replied “Sorry to hear it, but I do know that it is one of the few operations I know of where

everyone seems to have no problems and ends up extremely happy with the results. Keep me posted on plans.  Maybe my gall bladder removal will end up being at the same time!”

       There’s a song by Rambling Jack Elliott that has the refrain “Arthritis is the thing to miss—it will leave you walking with a double twist. And it’s all kinds of trouble gonna find you somehow.” It’s almost 5 a.m., maybe the acetominophen has started to work, and maybe it will do better than the megaibuprofen that’s been prescribed, so that I could get at least a few hours of decent sleep.

       Good luck with yours, Mrs. Calabash, whatever it is.

  

WRAPPING UP SEPTEMBER

WRAPPING UP SEPTEMBER

  

New term: stodgical lopping place, as in “My writing has come to a stodgical lopping place—my brain is getting stodgy so I’d better cut out working right now.”

 

 

My next poetry compilation will be “Fool’s Errand,” three-line poems which, rather than owing to the haiku tradition, draw more on syllogisms. Or perhaps boxing: boom boom POW. Or maybe the Mafia: “Two to the body, one to the head.” Here’s something that recently went onto a five-by-eight file card, to be put in a three-ring binder with the rest, awaiting final sorting and revision:

 

It’s taken me sixty-one years, and I’m not done yet.

Must men always be a force for farce?

In one womb and out the other.

 

Note that I did NOT say “logical syllogisms.”

 

---------------------------------

 

Around Middlebury, masses of trees have been showing stress, from the long rainy period then a three-week drought. Now I’m seeing a lot of stress color: leaves that are green except for a bright red border, rather than having a healthy spectrum of hues. I’ll put an example of this at the end.

 

 

       I’m not one of FairPoint’s customers, but I sympathize with those who are. The other day I called a number where the subscriber had decided to use the phone system’s message recording system rather than an answering machine.

       “At the tone, please enter the number of the person you are trying to reach, including the area code,” came the message. I did so. The result was to activate a message that said, “At the tone, please enter the number of the person you are trying to reach, including the area code.”

       For investigative purposes, I entered the number again—all I had to do was push my repeat button—and so did Hal, or whatever obsolete droid they had acquired for the purpose.

       A company that can’t manage an answering service shouldn’t be entrusted with the task of expanding Vermont’s broadband access. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice….