Mike Pearson's Adventures on a Pale Blue Dot

This mostly a video post. I just dug these few clips up recently from the 2006-2008 years of the Sea to Sky Highway project. You will see in the beginning, several trim shots at Cut 14. These are gentle little shots to get the pioneering road in...and not destroy the power-lines and fiber-optic across the road. The excavator is there to control the blast mats when the shot goes off. The shot is designed so that the machine is not in any jeopardy. The highway is closed by traffic control people, but we only have a few minutes to get the shot done, clean the debris, and then re-open the road. On some days we have 5 minutes total. Some days are 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the time of day, day of the week, night/day and various holidays. There are blog posts that feature more detail on the whole Cut 14 adventure. There are also posts that detail the work on Cut 5, and show how close it is to the ferry terminal below. Cut 14...photos and stuff  http://adventuresinmikeslife.blog...

"> Here are a few blasting videos that I recovered from an old disc. There are more images that just need to be recover and processed...it'll just take time. The link is at the bottom...  The first video is at the Cut 10 area, beside the highway. We put the excavator bucket over the shot to keep the blast mats from flying into the air...and into the fiber-optic line...or over the bluff and down 100 feet. The other shots are a Eagleridge (Cut 4 )...one of the small ones is a bit of a dud...where the shock-tube got broken when the blast mats were put on. It's called a "cut-off".....not dangerous...just a piss-off ( it takes a ton of time to re-attach everything...and put the mats back on. The larger Cut 4 shots...are only matted on the Upper Levels Highway side...to control the amount of fly-rock coming over that way. The highway was closed by our traffic control people also, as an extra precaution. Some of the larger shots ( which I hope to post...