It stood firm beneath my feet

Now that it’s been a couple of days since I undertook a very rare experience, I am finding that I have some afterthoughts. There were some observations I noticed during that time that were overshadowed by other thoughts. One of which was something I was most curious about beforehand. This was brought to the forefront this morning while I was at work helping a client with his meal. While he was eating, I decided it was a good time to show him some of the multitude of pictures I took on this past Sunday morning. The expression on his face told me he thought what I had done was really cool. And then he asked me if that structure on which I had stood and walked had swayed, shook or moved. To which I replied in the negative. The old iron monster of the bay had remained rock solid beneath me and everyone else who had traversed its deck that morning. Even when I stopped to take pictures I did not notice any motion. This was the same client who swore up and down he could feel the Key Bridge moving beneath his car when he drove across it. Now I might expect to feel some movement if I happened to be on the bridge when an 18 wheeler went thundering by. But with just the minimal weight of a few thousand people strolling along its deck, the metal monster remained motionless. Such was a very light load for it to carry, considering the normal traffic of thousands of cars and trucks. In a weird way I was somewhat disappointed that I did not feel the Bay Bridge move, even just a tiny bit. That would have added even more of a thrill to my journey across it.

This is perhaps related to another minor disappointment I encountered. As I walked along, I noticed that every single one of the expansion joints had been covered up with some kind of black rubber and taped down. These joints were one feature of this bridge I had hoped to be able to see. I’ve seen pictures of them, and they are of the interlocking tooth type, looking for all the world like a giant zipper. In an old documentary about the building of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge I found on a Public TV site, they showed footage from a walk across the bridge from long ago. There was a brief shot of the teeth of one of these joints actually moving, which was totally surreal. I wonder why the state saw fit to cover these spots. Perhaps they were afraid that someone might get an undone shoelace caught…. Or, might they have not wanted people to be able to see any gnashing of these steel teeth? Maybe some people would have freaked out and thought the bridge was going to come down, especially after the recent Key Bridge disaster. But, I really cannot see anyone who would willingly engage in such a walk having anything resembling fear or even apprehension of the Bay Bridge. But such is only a small thing to miss out on when considering the big picture.