Pete, from the Spirit of the Woods Chapter of the NCTA, has been working on the trail every day for a week and a half, with a couple of days to go. The chapter has had the help of two groups of young people and several of our volunteers. Today, they were replacing the decking on 5 small bridges that are in my adopted section of trail. For some reason, the decking boards were not treated lumber, and they were getting pretty rotten.
Pete got the saw set up to cut the new boards.
Mark was working on removing the old decking. These bridges are in the bottomland hardwood swamp area. Thankfully it's pretty dry at this time of year, so he could stand down in the water channels to work on the boards. He pulled them off then turned them over and laid them on the stringers so we could still walk across.
The stringers and sills are still in good shape. This one is awaiting the new boards. I'm not sure why it has the hump in the middle. Originally, all five bridges were very narrow with a hump. They were replaced once, a number of years ago now, and made wider so the mower could be taken over them. At that time the hump was kept in one of them.
In a little while, the EcoSeeds group showed up with four college students. I gave them instruction on how to replace the boards, and they got right down to business.
Except for showing the group what they needed to do, I spent most of my time taking lumber out to the bridges from where Pete was cutting it. I got my exercise for the day. I took 9 loads of boards and 1 load of tools and hardware before I had to leave. That's between 3 and 4 miles of pushing a loaded wheelbarrow. I was feeling a little wimpy taking only 6 boards at a time, but we had to go across some uneven ground before we got to the trail. After I saw that the "kids" also chose to only do 6 boards at a time, I didn't feel so wimpy anymore. Damp, treated lumber is heavy!
I've been busy with Bernie and Loretta, and haven't gotten out to help as much as I wanted, but at least I made one work day.
In the afternoon, Loretta and I actually did something together. We went to Manistee to see Oppenheimer at the Vogue theater (great movie!), and then we went out to dinner.
It was a great day. But tomorrow I need to get back to my own worklist.
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3 comments:
That's a lot of trips with a wheelbarrow full of boards.
Lulu: "Ooh, our Dada has a saw like that one! And remarkably, he also still has both his hands and all his fingers ..."
Ann- It was just enough. I would have been sore if I'd done more.
Lulu- Excellent news about the fingers.
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