Publix Progress
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Another trench done gone (humming Johnny Cash's another man done gone)
Here it was

+

and here it is today

Here is where it went

No idleness on their part.

Deep trench.

notice the man with the white hard hat who is standing in the trench.  The old trench connection is in the foreground.

The trenching returns.  An 18 wheeler with huge pipes arrived.  Delivered to the same side where the earlier trench was located.  Too bad that the dirt was too soft and the 18 wheeler had to be towed out of the sand using forklifts front and back.

This morning they started a new trench 90 degrees to the road.

The Trench.  My favorite part of this construction.  They dug a 5 foot deep by 60 feet long  trench directly across the street from my house.  They laid in some kind of pipe probably a water line, then covered it up. 2 Days later they dug the same trench and ran some other piping in it. They covered it up again.  Another couple of days and guess what? Yes, they dug it up again.  This time they put in large plastic sewer pipes (taller than a man).  They used the big yellow backhoe again, to reiterate it is BIG. They would dig a length of ditch, then a worker would get in the ditch and make sure the slope was right.  If it wasn't the backhoe would take about an inch or two off the angle and scoop that to the side until the slope was correct  The bucket was turned over and the trench was patted down.  This went on for the entire length of the trench. I have no idea why they didn't do all three at once.  Each new pipe had a different crew so no one could answer any questions about the previous pipes.  I loved watching the giant backhoe dig small amounts of dirt and patting it smooth.

The tortoises are gone so now they fill in the hole.  Plus the ground is uneven.  Behind CVS there was a depression with tree and underbrush so the big backhoe cleared it out. It was so deep that you could not see one of their pickup trucks that went into the depression to inspect it.  Then came the Giant yellow dump trucks and poured dirt everywhere.  They scraped it level and dumped more dirt in it. At the same time, they created a couple of mountains of sand by the tortoise end. Once everything was smooth they laid the foundation for Publix and then giant frontend loaders arrived and flatbed after flatbed with cinder blocks.. That will be another episode.

Let me tell you about the first crazy thing that brought back to mind all of the other interesting things. First they did all the prep work. Which, in this case, was to dig up all of the land tortoises  I did not know that land tortoises were endangered and they burrowed about 25 feet underground.  There were large backhoes, the kind with the curved bucket, scooping out the turtles.  I have no idea how they knew exactly where they were and how deep and wide to keep from harming the tortoises.  They dug up a least 50 and took them someplace.

Next installment is the giant Tonka dump trucks and I mean huge. 

I was talking to Cheryl (my oldest daughter) and she thought I should blog about the massive building project occurring across the street.  I was telling her about all of the MASSIVE Tonka trucks, lifts, diggers etc.  She was laughing as I was telling her about my simple observations. Cheryl's husband is a construction engineer and she has been on some of his construction sites. She said I was now Bob The Builder and she could picture in her mind all of my Tonka Toys as I described them. So I will sit in my chair, under the shade tree and write down all of the funny (to me) things I see.