Some of us work at what we do all year round. My trash and recycling is being collected as I write because Monday is always Monday where I live- and this work is done on Christmas Day or any other holiday as well. True, it's a private company, not a state or local government funded operation. That said, the men who work at this are so spiffy, so polite, so cheery in greeting me as I race out with the last little bit of recycling you would think that we were at a cocktail party.
The bridges in San Francisco are maintained all year round as well. When I moved here the first time, I learned that the Golden Gate is always being painted. Surely, those workers get this weekend off? But we know that the Golden Gate is an Icon, as Icon's go. It is a lovely color. And it is a stunning structure to look at. I see it from my bedroom window here in the East Bay, when the fog is not between me and it. I have come to love the fog as well, but the fog is another story. This one is about labor devoted the well being of others.
Caltrans shut down the other big bridge, the East Bay Bridge, for the weekend on Thursday at 8:00 in the evening so that a span on my side could be sliced away and replaced, just part of a seismic retrofit which is scheduled for completion in 2013. The Bay Bridge allows travel for a quarter million commuters everyday. That quarter million is in addition to those who use the rapid transit system known as BART, which from my side travels underneath the Bay to cross it. A 50 foot span on the Bay Bridge collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake; thus the necessary commitment to a seismic retrofit. A very good thing California is able to afford this infrastructure project, don't you agree? Or was, at the time that it was planned. I love the nickname of the huge sea going crane employed to raise the heavy steel for this project: The Left Coast Lifter.
When inspection on Saturday revealed a crack at a significant distance from the site of the  span replacement, a crack halfway through a span-supporting steel link- a crack large enough to close the Bridge by itself!- the news now became that the Bridge had to remain closed for some indefinite period. The two inch thick piece of steel functions within a series of eight links. But a link cracked all of halfway through, and discovered only when the opportunity to inspect so closely presented itself with the Bridge empty of traffic?  Well, that is something to shudder about. So we were braced for days of crowded BART trains, late arrival at work, delayed returning home and a general condition of frayed nerves and headaches. We were  told to expect at least one additional day without the Bridge and perhaps much longer, perhaps a couple of weeks.
But this morning bought news of American Labor Day Weekend heroics. A steel contractor in Arizona has been hard at work throughout the weekend. The repair materials are now complete and were flown during the night by charted plane to San Francisco and then moved onto the Bridge with police escort. I wish I could have been there to cheer the parade.
As the crew work frantically up there in the sky, the rest of us plan our grilling of food and our gathering of loved ones. My husband and a couple of our brood are meeting just now at the Rockeridge BART station or beyond to bike up Mt Diablo. It is a gorgeous sunny day. I am planning to cook a menu for both vegetarian and carnivore family members. Have fun, my husband and I say to each other as he leaves to ride to the BART station. I will walk the dog and get ready to make Italian sauce for meatball and non meat meatball hoagies.
And the crew continues, laboring as fast as they can, putting our almost Humpty Dumpty Bridge back together so that we can carry out normal lives beginning Tuesday morning. Happy Labor Day.