Yesterday Christopher and I were doing our
usual James Island Connector noon run. Running along the connector toward
MUSC we often look for
any changes to the new Cooper River Bridge which can clearly be seen in the
distance. Usually there is little change to
see (we are probably 2 miles from the bridge), but yesterday was a surprise - you could identify new cable bundles being built from the curvature
of newly erected cable sheaths - the 14th on the west side.
So this morning (7am) I raced to
the Aquarium to take a few photos and hoping that the workers had not completed
the tensioning during the night. I was not disappointed. Here you can see
the white sheaths with curvature, not fully tensioned. Check the
Approach photos for more detail. By noon, the
clouds cleared so I returned about 5pm to make a few more photos and
discovered that they were erecting the 14th edge girder on the channel side
of the west platform.
7am
Where are the west-most hurricane cables? It seems that this set was
temporary - to minimize lateral movement of the west deck until it could
be connected to the west approach. Now that the approach has been attached
these cables are no longer necessary. In addition, the counterweights are
being removed since a balancing act is no longer required (thanks to David
Wertz, SCDOT).
5pm: Erecting the 14th edge girder (if I counted correctly)
10 minutes later
A close look at the girder
I am often surprised by what I do not see. I was so focused on capturing
the new cables and their curved sheaths that I completely missed the fact
that the west-most hurricane cables are now absent. I only discovered this
change when I was annotating this photo. Check out the photo below and you
will see the west hurricane cables in place. Hmmm - wonder what this is
all about?