W26 and West Side Highway - The Dockworkers (Part 1)

It's ten minutes before six in the morning and I head to the Pier 66 Boathouse as I do every Tuesday and Thursday to go rowing with my crew. They say the City never sleeps. In fact, it takes a much deserved nap between 4 and 5:30 in the morning. The streetlights are reflecting off the wet streets intensifying the orange glow of artificially lit asphalt.

I enter the dark boathouse and am startled by one of my teammates. She looks distressed which is a sharp contrast to her usual upbeat demeanor. "We have a problem," she says. We walk to the end of the boathouse and open the roll-up door that leads to the dock and our boats. The darkness of the boathouse quickly fills with a blinding light as the door cranks opens. As my eyes adjust to the brightness, I see our boats sitting on the floating dock in their usual position but the 20 foot bridge leading to it is nowhere to be seen.

My eyes gravitate towards the source of the blinding light. Several flood lamps are pointed in my direction from a floating barge next to the dock. Above this barge was our bridge, a few thousand pounds of steel softly swaying in the breeze suspended 30 feet up from the boom of a crane.


One by one, grizzled men in flannel shirts and bright orange life jackets emerge from the end of the barge. We explain to them our predicament and they are very accommodating, promising us they would have the bridge in place in a half hour. We decide to stand back and settle in for the show.

...to be continued...