Mike Pearson's Adventures on a Pale Blue Dot

That's all good and fine, except that there are no drill bits and no dynamite in this story. There are however.... trees falling out of the sky. That'll just have to do for now. This is back on the Sea to Sky project again. Cut 10 was in full swing with drilling and blasting operations. The tree fallers were working up above on the nasty Cut 9. I was in the parking lot above the Cut 10 job and started to notice that the traffic was starting to slow down and bunch up. On this narrow ribbon of highway it was always a sign of a problem when the traffic did this. It got to the point where there was no north-bound traffic at all. A minute later, south-bound ground to a halt. I called on the radio, asking if anybody knew what was up. It could be a broken down vehicle, one of our trucks dropped a rock...anything out of the ordinary would do it.  One of the guys called back, yelling gibberish at the tip of his lungs.  I asked him to repeat, so that I could understand him. Same th...

Cut 14 is the area that was featured in the "Helicopters and Dynamite" story.   http://adventuresinmikeslife.blogspot.ca/2011/11/superbowl-sundayhelicopters-and.html This section of work was at the very north end of Segment One of the S2S Highway project. It featured very tall, steep rock bluffs that had to be sliced and diced to make room for a wider roadway.  This requires that we as the blasting crew have to do "pioneering" work, to get up on top of the rock features, so that we can drill down vertically for the actual cuts. In some cases, horizontal blast holes ( lifters ) can be used to minimize trail building, but it is extremely hard to control lifter shots. Lifter shots create lots of unpredictable fly-rock, more vibration and more noise than properly planned vertical hole shots. ( we did use lifter shots on Cut 9 and 10, when there was no alternative....and nothing to hit with the fly rock ) 330 Cat excavator up on a pioneer trail that's onl...

"> 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...

I've been wanting to write this story for ages. It's about the road construction workers response to an early morning forest fire that was accidentally? set by a fellow that lived in the bush beside the jobsite. Before I get into that, I'd like to thank my photographer/writer friend Deyna . He recovered the lost video footage from an old disc and made it usable for this blog entry. Here is a photo of Deyna when I asked for his help.. But then ...things got better when I told him how much I was willing to pay Then I added the fact that the people involved in the fire response...would really appreciate his efforts....well...that changed everything..  Deyna was so thrilled with the deal that he told his buddy Jack, the great news...Jack was over the moon with delight at his friends good fortune.. The story...for real this time.  When we started the work on the new section of highway, there were several people living in the forest..."off the grid."  Som...

I thought I lost these images in a hard drive melt down. I found them again, tucked away in a corner of the back-up portable system. I had some of the photos on discs...these are a few new ones from the treasure chest. Even though it is old news, it's better to have the images out in the fresh air. This is in the area of Robson and Jervis streets, Vancouver BC... Feb 2010. A mix of protesters and Blac Bloc face off with a first wave of police response...and then the heavy artillery reinforcements come in. There was a third wave response waiting in the wings after that.