Gold’s Concrete Pour: A Day in the Mountains

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Today we’re driving out to Bailey, Colorado to drop in on a concrete pour for a job we’re doing in the mountains. It’s a beautiful morning in early May and spring is in the air. Birds are chirping and children are playing somewhere, but all we can hear is the tumultuous traffic around us.

The highway twists and turns around a forest of pines and looming mountain boulders, and the city disappears in the rear view mirror. With a sigh of impatience I adjust myself in my seat and drum my fingers on the console. There is at least a beautiful view on this ride. This is a long drive, and we’re just getting started.

A Drive in the Mountains

I exit at Bailey and take Wellington Lake Road southwest. I’ve been here before with Tom, our Operations Manager, so I know how to get to the jobsite from here…sort of. The road turns from pavement to gravel to dirt, and I continue down it another seven miles or so. I pass a National Park and I know I’ve gone too far or missed a turn.Damn! I head back.

I make it almost back to Bailey and see two concrete trucks coming down the road. I pull over quick and let them go by so that I can fall in behind them. I know these are our trucks because our pour is scheduled in half an hour. The trucks go by and a big cloud of dust trails along behind them. It is a relief to have some certainty now that I am on my way!

A Slight Delay

We go about nine miles in the same direction and down the same road I had just come from. I see a campground that looks unfamiliar and I think we’ve gone too far once again.I think maybe these are not our trucks, after all.I see no Gold’s Concrete work trucks around and determine I have made a terrible mistake. Double damn!! I head back to Bailey once again and call Tom.

“It’s about ten miles down Wellington Lake Road,” he says on the phonecall. “Great,” I said as I slapped myself on the forehead, “thanks.” And I headed back down the same road again for the third time. Turns out, if I had driven a few miles further the very first time down, I would’ve been there a long time ago.

A New Foundation

A big, beautiful lake surrounded by tall pine trees and a giant campground are nestled into the mountains where we finally pull up to the job. I step out of the car take a deep breath of fresh mountain air. My legs are stiff from spending half the day driving. My dog, my small brown and tan Minpin, bolts out of the vehicle and goes off to explor.

I bring out the camera and begin to document the progress on the job. Jaime, our subcontractor who is in charge of forming and installing the foundation of this building, explains the initial steps.

“First thing we did was excavate. That’s what you see all of this heavy equipment for. Then we form and pour the footers, and on top of those footers we’re going to put up walls. On top of the walls they’re going to come in with beams, and that’s how the building is gonna tie together…”

Tim, our pump guy, finishes pumping the concrete into the forms. Jaime and his crew pull measurements and place dowels. Buddy, my Minpin, tries his hand at backfill. You could spend the entire day here just staring at the lake. There is a cool breeze coming off the water and whistling through the pines. I close my eyes and imagine a different life.

I have the urge to be done with work for the day. I have an urge for the sun to go down. I have an urge to light a campfire and bring out some hot dogs. Buddy has the urge to dig a thousand small holes across the mountain side, just deep enough to trip in. I bring myself back to the matter at hand and capture a few final recordings around the jobsite.

What’s Next?

The sub contractors wrap up and leave quickly. Tim, the last man on the job, cleans out the pump and squares away. I take a few more pictures and head back to Denver to report the day’s events to Tom. “Everything went good,” I explain to him. “A form blew out in one corner but it was put back together quickly and everything else went smooth…So what’s the next step on that job?”

“They’re gonna put up the walls,” Tom explains. “They’re gonna form up one side of the wall, then they tie the rebar in, then they put up the other side of the wall. That way they have room to work on the rebar inside of the wall before closing it in.”

Tool Review

I’ve been having some issues with my Panasonic camera that came to a culminating point on this shoot when it would no longer zoom. This camera has taken a beating over the years so I’m not surprised that it’s starting to malfunction, but some features such as the auto-focus tracker have always performed poorly.

This Panasonic Lumix camera is just an entry-level point-and-shoot, so for the price point and the amount of abuse it has endured, I would still say this is an all-around good camera for someone who is taking a slightly more serious approach to filming and/or photography.

This is the Panasonic LUMIX FZ1000 II 20.1MP Digital Camera. Here’s a small list of pros and cons from my experience with this camera:

Pros:

• The zoom is 16X (25 – 400mm), so it’s really handy for getting close up when you can’t physically get close to your subject.

• Frame rates go all the way from 24fps at 4K resolution, which is the frame rate you would see in a classic movie production, to 120fps, which is a buttery smooth slow motion.

• It’s a bigger camera, especially with the zoom lens, so it looks professional.

• It’s a point-and-shoot, which can be a bad thing but also a good thing because you don’t have to fuss with lenses. You can grab it and go.

Cons:

• The automatic zoom makes a noise that interrupts the recording if you’re trying to film and zoom at the same time.

• The auto focus is horrible. It can track or hold on the subject for sometimes only a second, then will trail off to focus on something else. Worse, it’s not a touch screen, so you’re constantly having to re-center and re-focus.

• The image stabilizer inside of the camera causes it to stick when I’m trying to do a smooth pan.

• It’s a point-and-shoot, so you’re stuck with one lens and cannot upgrade without buying an entirely new camera.

See the full corresponding video to this blog below.