A few examples of making tracks this week…
First, someone has made some sawdust tracks from the trunk of a tree that needed to come down at our grandkids’ school. His sculpture looks pretty good!
We made tracks to Gary and Kathy’s home for a Sabbath School potluck dinner and worship service one evening. Very nice!
The biggest track was a birding excursion in Wilderness Park in South West Lincoln.
We didn’t see many birds, but did see tons of insects! Including hundreds of Soldier Beetles, like the one shown below.
As often happens, we heard far more birds than we were able to locate. But not that we didn’t try!
I was leaning on a post when I was told this little guy was about to climb onto my arm! Even though he’s rather small, I moved out of his track!
The land just south of us is rapidly being transformed into roads and houses. We have watched many houses go from a hole dug in the ground to a finished and lived in home.
Now they are making more tracks, for more homes! Roadways bulldozed across the meadow, ready for more concrete…
The machines to lay down these concrete roads are amazing!
A cement mixer dumps a load right in front of a spreader, that forms the whole road, or half of a road, complete with curb. Then actual humans smooth the wet concrete…
Then another vehicle drags heavy cloth over the wet cement to leave a texture for better traction.
Here’s a few seconds of movement… the finishing of the concrete. You may notice that the curb on the near side vanishes pretty quickly – because that is where another road will branch off this one.
Here they’re getting ready for another leg of concrete roads.
The mixer has just dumped loads of “mud” in front of the spreader. (I think they are actually called Slipform Pavers.)
The paver is about to transform the pile of cement on the left to the smooth road on the right.
A couple of days later the road has been scored, or cut into sections for expansion, and looking like a finished road. While they are driving equipment on the new road, I’m pretty sure it has to cure a while before cars are allowed.
Another fascinating device is the concrete pumper. Here the forms have been set for the basement of a new house, and the pumper is getting ready for the first cement truck to arrive.
Here he’s showing us the remote that positions the pumper’s nozzle, and turns the flow of wet cement on or off. With this gadget he can adjust that huge arm in very precise increments, responding to commands (requests?) by the guys filling the forms.
He said it will take 7 or 8 cement trucks to fill the forms for this basement! Lots of cement moving into the neighborhood…