Steelwalker
It takes about five seconds to fall 450 feet. It takes 5 seconds to reach a speed of ninety miles per hour when you fall 450 feet under the pull of gravity starting from a state of rest. My heart stopped for the entirety of those 5 seconds. And then it began to beat at over 180 beats per minute. My mind completely blocked out all sound, except for the thud from the contact with the concrete below. Slowly, I began regaining awareness of the sound of the sirens from around me. I stared down at the Sharpie I had just lost. Even with my heart beating wildly in my head, I felt a little relieved that it had hit no one. I shifted tentatively, as I sat on a twenty four inch wide, grey steel beam, 450 feet up in the air. I had a safety harness that would catch me if I fell. But it would also cut off my femoral artery and I would lose my life in about 30 minutes. I knew this all along, but the Sharpie’s fall really heightened by awareness of the fact.
There were iron workers around me. Big men, strong men. I
supposed they would walk the steel to help rescue me if I fell. I remember them
joking that I was too little and that I would simply fall out of my harness if
I tripped. They always had the same reaction when they first saw me. Their gait
would slow, their lips would curl up in mockery of how small a dude I was, then
their eyes would slowly widen in surprise as they registered, and then they
would look at my chest to confirm that I was indeed a woman. Then they’d think
I was cute because I had just spent 25 minutes making my way up to the 450 feet
tall roof just to sit around and look pretty. Then the smirks would start
amongst them. And I am sure there were bets too, of when I would freak out or
how soon I would fall. But then, as I’d slowly climb over the catwalk, and walk
onto the steel beams supporting the mammoth roof of this arena, they’d silently
acknowledge that maybe they were wrong.
I was a video board programmer, and didn’t really belong
here. As the safety inspector had insisted over and over during the
orientation, “this is an active construction site”. However, after the boards
were up in the air, welded, bolted and securely held in place against the
fiercest hurricanes, the only way to examine them was to become a steel walker.
These video boards were state of the art. We had spent months designing and
testing all the hardware and software. They had worked perfectly for the first
two days after they were put up. However, now there were dead spaces on the
display. The last time something went wrong with a similar set of video boards,
it took me a week of walking steel to find the tiny capacitor that had failed
us. I wondered how long it would take me today - especially after I had lost my
sharpie and the only way I had to track my movements and findings.
The weather was beginning to cool down. The ETFE pillows of
the gigantic roof were being put up and helped keep out the sun. It had rained
the previous night and I would have been cold had it not been for the thick
socks, steel toe boots, mandatory full sleeves t-shirt, pants, safety, harness,
thick gloves, hard hat and safety glasses. The safety vest he gave me was two
sizes too big, long and beginning to disseminate the malodors it had been
gathering from the greases, oils, paints, concrete and fade under the dust it
had been gathering. The contractor had warned me against washing it too often
for fear that the reflective stripes on it would fade. I didn’t need them to be
visible though.
The men never forgot me. It had been a year since I
inspected the video boards in Tampa, but a guy stopped me on the catwalk today
and exclaimed, “You’re the lady inspector from the arena in Tampa!” Yesterday,
when I took a two minute break to get a sip of water, the welder claimed “I am
making sure you are warm” when he turned on his torch and brought it’s
temperature up to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
posted by Pearl @ 6:30 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home