A Long Hot Ride
Isaac Newton said, “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
It was already eighty-six degrees and the humidity was 80 % at 6:45 AM on Wednesday when we resumed our ride south on Rt 17. We crossed the Neuse River in New Bern on a bridge that was battered by five hurricanes during its construction from 1995 until 1999.
It seemed sturdy enough, considering that there was: 49,000,000 pounds of steel; 200,000 cubic yards reinforced concrete ; 221,000 feet (just about forty miles worth) of pilings, drilled shaft, and piers; eight miles of bridge railing; and 40,000 feet (over seven miles) of concrete precast girders used in the building of the bridge.
During construction, engnineers used the combined efforts of two 200-ton cranes, one 350-ton “ringer” crane and one 100-ton assist crane, all on floating barges and all in tandem to place the 260 foot main channel span girder. The foundation of the bridge involved driving a thousand piles and placing eight hundred drilled shafts, using steel casing and a bentonite slurry wall technique for excavation support. The drilled shafts were one hundred feet deep, twenty five of which were rock socketed, a technique used to support the heavy loads in support structures. There was a concern if all the parts would ultimately fit, considering the complex geometry in the fabrication of the six hundred twenty nine steel girders and more than two thousand cross frames and diaphragms that were utilized. It was seven years from the conceptualization and development of the plans, to the time the bridge was completed in 1999.
Rt. 17 changes from a two lane highway, to a four lane highway back to a two lane highway, cutting through towns and villages such as Vanceboro, Maysville, Jacksonville, Holly Ridge, Wilmington, and Bolivia as it makes it’s way south in North Carolina. The towns and villages all seem to have WalMarts and Waffle Houses. I had expected a mostly rural experience riding south on Rt.17, but with exception of the occasional cluster of farms with corn six or seven feet tall, it felt like a suburban experience. Churches, WalMarts and Waffle Houses dotted the ride. When when we rode into the Myrtle Beach area in North Carolina, we found ourselves in a urban tourist trap, inundated with hotels, WalMarts, Waffle Houses and dozens of miniature golf courses with dinosaur themes, water park themes, airplane themes, and volcano themes, all presented as if it were a carnival ride at a state fair. It was slow moving traffic and the temperature, depending on which bank sign I read, was between eighty nine to ninety two degrees. I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and even with the sun block, my arms had reddened. Still, I wasn’t boxed in a steel case, but I wasn’t afforded air conditioning either. I wanted to move out of the congestion and the theme park life style of Myrtle Beach. I wanted to feel the wind.
After escaping the bottle necking and overcapacity of Myrtle Beach, we continued south on Rt. 17 past Georgetown. We slowed our ride in the Francis Marion National Forest, a park just northeast of Charleston, South Carolina. Despite the heat, the air was crisp with a strong scent of pine in the thirty miles through the park.
The park is named after Francis Marion, a patriot who served in South Carolina in the Revolutionary War. He began his military career just before his twenty-fifth birthday when he and his brother were recruited to serve the British for the French and Indian War. One of the influences for the main character that was played by Mel Gibson in the movie, “The Patriot” was Francis Marion.
He served as a lieutenant and had developed a reputation for having fought a brutal campaign against the Cherokee . However in a quoted letter, in “The Life of Francis Marion” by W. Gilmore Simms, Marion spoke of the British-led campaign with sorrow when referring to an attack against the Cherokee. Later, during the revolutionary war, Marion served for the South Carolina Provincial Congress as a captain in the defense of Fort Sullivan and Fort Moultrie in Charleston. The Continental Congress commissioned Marion as a Lieutenant and he took part in the siege of Savannah. Referred to as “the swamp fox”, he utilized guerrilla warfare techniques, and made himself and his troops a nuisance to the British. He is considered the father of modern guerrilla warfare with direct lineage to the modern day Army Rangers. After he showed himself to be an able leader, he was commissioned a brigadier general of state troops. He subsequently served as a State Senator for South Carolina and in recognition of his services, he was made fort commander at Fort Johnson. He died in 1795.
The Francis Marion National Forest has been referred to as a park under construction and that the contractor is mother nature. It is a fertile and luxuriant 250,000 acre forest situated along the inter-coastal waterway of South Carolina. It has an intense variety of wild life habitat including otters, beavers, bobcats, black bears, and coyotes, making for a perfect location for wild life enthusiasts and lovers of nature. There ares some 250 different species of birds found in the park including the bald eagle. The park has a system of hiking and biking trails, back country paths as well as rough roads for motorcycles and ATVs. The are blackwater swamps in the forest with majestic bald cypress and water tupelo trees teeming with raccoons, barred owls, wood ducks and the endangered rockaded woodpeckers.
Rt. 17 led us right into Charleston. In the few miles before entering the city, in Mt Pleasant, there were side roads leading to a series of cul de sacs with commerical businesses that were difficult to see from Rt. 17. It was an example of community planning at its best with business were tucked neatly away from the main road behind trees and brush, avoiding the look of strip malls, large parking lots, and oversized monotonous box like stores.
To enter historic downtown we traveled over the Arthur Ravenel Bridge, a cable stayed bridge over the Cooper River, connecting Charleston and Mount Pleasant. It is not only an impressive structure in terms of its engineering, it is also an attractive sculpture. It is an eight lane bridge with a main span of over fifteen hundred feet. It has two diamond shaped towers, each standing at a height of 575 feet. The total lenghtof the bridge structure is 13,200. There are 128 individual cables anchored to the towers suspending the deck 187 feet above the river. The cables consist of 90 seven wire strands with each cable holding over one million pounds. In addition to the eight 12 foot lanes, four for each direction, there is a 12 foot bicycle and pedestrian path on the southern side of the bridge providing for a view of the Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean. During the construction more than 100,000 tons of cement was used for the bridges girders, decks, columns and towers. 50,000 tons of reinforced steel and 40,000 tons of structured steel were also needed in the construction. There were 400 drilled shafts, eleven of which drop 200 feet down through each of the main footings. Construction began in 2001 even before the design was finalized. It is designed to withstand 300 mile an hour winds and an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale. The two diamond towers are protected from ships by the construction of small rock islands built around the towers.
The bridge was opened in July of 2005 at a cost of 531 million dollars. Mindful of motorcyclists, and considering the problem, and the time in getting money out of pockets, there is no toll to cross the bridge.
After crossing the bridge, we took a short ride into historic downtown Charleston. Tired from the ride, we stopped at a Motel 6, where they keep the light on for you. Next door was a Waffle House and of course down the street was a Wal Mart. I turned on the TV after settling in, and watched the fair and balanced national news to find that the main focus of the day’s stories remained on the life and death of Michael Jackson. I heard nothing about the death of Sgt. Roger L. Adams Jr. of Jacksonville, North Carolina; nothing on the death of Sgt. Juan C. Baldeosingh of Newport, North Carolina; nothing on the death of Spc. Robert L. Bittiker of Jacksonville, North Carolina; and nothing on the death of Sgt. Edward C. Kramer, of Wilmington, North Carolina, all of whom died from wounds suffered from when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle in Baghdad on June 29. 2009. I heard nothing on the national news about the death of these men until I read the sixth page of USA today, on July 6, 2009, a week later, while the headlines referred to Michael Jackson, and who was going to handle his fortune. Over a week of front page news, and and later accolades bantered about at the final services of a man, albeit extremely talented, who reportedly paid 20 million dollars to quiet a child he had allegedly sexually abused, while the death of four american soldiers, true heros, barely made a short quip on the sixth page of a national newspaper.
Bruce Jackson said, “Bridges become the frames for looking at the world around us.”
We have the capacity to build monumental structures, and develop innovative technology allowing to see from magnificent heights, cross long distances, and communicate with robots we have placed on other planets. Yet, we focus on the trivial, glorifying a wealthy fallen bojangler, and then we fail to give recognition to those individuals that honored us with their service and ultimately made the greatest of sacrifice of all.
What a piece of work is man.