October 31, 2015

Tougher Than We Thought!

WOW!  That was a lot of work!  But it came out fantastic!

west side of tank shows the sloping ground level

our solution to the sloping surface problem


there's 13 seams per long side, 2 seams per short side

We must have counted wrong.  There was 30 seams, not 32 as we had remembered.  The first work day, Monday, we finished 8 seams.  My job was to prep the surface.  Ron's job was to weld the strips onto the tank.  It took a little while before we settled into a routine.  We finally left the work site just as the sky was getting dark. 


the moon arose into the sky just as we were leaving

By the next day we had figured out the kinks and finished 10 more strips.  Alas, we again left just as the sky was going dark.

Wednesday's weather was iffy.  There was a mist in the air - not good when working with electrical equipment.  It cleared up around 11AM and we got to work.  We did manage to complete another 9 strips, leaving the last two strips for our final day of work.

Those two strips proved to be the most challenging.  The scrubbers for the huge bio filter tank are located close to our work area.  We had to contort our bodies and equipment to fit the tight space.

right foot on the ladder plus left foot on a support member = one crazy contortionist position


We thought we'd be out of there by lunchtime.  Wrong...  It took us until 3:30 before we were all cleaned up and ready to put this job in the done folder.

Unfortunately, our long hours of working left very little time to explore and visit as we had originally hoped for.

But we did manage to see a couple cool things our last full day.

1.  The writing on the hillside 

South San Francisco, The Industrial City

2.  Magic Mountain playground  is a multi level castle and dragon themed play area

I'd love to play here :-)

proof of my 'age denial'

3. Ron's childhood home

so many memories behind those walls...

All in all it was a successful trip.  We got the work done.  We finished on time despite the weather.  We saw some new things.  We saw some old things.  We drove previously unexplored roads (thanks to our Garmin, DJ).  We stayed at a nice hotel with a view of the planes coming into SFO.  We left realizing how lucky we are that we don't have to drive in the congested bay area traffic day after day.  We had the most delicious pizza at our favorite pizza place, Village Host Pizza.  We each had a job to do but we helped each other out when needed.  

Our dream of working on the road is coming to fruition!

October 24, 2015

Going On A Trip

"I want to get back to my City By The Bay..."  Not just lyrics to a famous Journey song "Lights", but also our destination for the upcoming work week.

Ron and I have been hired to work onsite at a South San Francisco recycling facility covering the 32 seams on a HUGE tank.  We were there this past February to cover one of the seams when it split.  Now the customer wants us to cover the other 31 seams to prevent this from happening in the future.

the tank is over 8' tall

a strip of material measuring 4" x 102" covers the seam

We'll be staying at a local hotel and bringing our equipment to the work site each day.

Ron and I met and fell in love just south of here, still have family living nearby, and want to explore our old stomping grounds so it'll be a week of work, fun and family!