Today, I froze my nuts off.

There were 4 of us working on the ore bridge today. WOP-sing, Hardy Har Har, myself, and New Guy. Damn, it was cold!! Imagine standing on a metal deck, 100 ft up, with no heat and no insulation, open to the elements. I thought I was being a sissy, warming my hands at the 100 watt light bulb, until I heard the guy on the radio say "Currently in Cleveland, we're at 15 degrees." HOLY SMOKES! No wonder I couldn't feel my toes, or fingers, or nose... As the temperature rose, up to 22, I felt like taking my jacket off. Tomorrow, with a forecast of 41 degrees, I imagine I'll be comfortable in a T-shirt.

Ok, I didn't really freeze my nuts off, they're still there; just shrunken remnants of what they used to be. Like those tiny marbles one finds in the yard once in awhile when weeding.

Cooler Days

This is the November sky I'm used to seeing here in Cleveland. The two ore bridges tower over the mountains of taconite. Rising up in the back is C-6 Blast Furnace. Yeah, it's cold.

Here, Johnny-O is in the spot I was in, when I took the pictures of Peeps and Hardy Har Har in the JLG lift. It's a small crawlspace between the main gear room below, and the motor deck above. You can see the motor feed conduits coming out of their respective pull boxes on either side of the picture. Towards the bottom are the new conduits I installed that hold the cables from the hot-rail pick-ups and go to the main switchgear.
A view from the basket of the JLG. The river isn't too far away. I had to swing out over the river while turning the rig around. It was a bit weird, thinking how cold the water would be if the rig tipped over. Sometimes, my imagination takes over....

Ahh, the pullbox. Whenever construction workers work in a hard to get to area, we feel the need to write our names there. I guess it's to let other workers know just how cool we are. Or maybe it just makes us feel cool. I don't know, but my name is all over Cleveland! All of us have nicknames too...like Jimmy 1450.

We also enjoy joking around! I'm the King of the Wooooorrrrlllllldd!

As the sun sets, the moon rises. Another day comes to an end at Mittal Steel, Cleveland Works.