pile driver

25 Jul 2007

So, they are slowly but surely hacking away at the parking lot between my apartment and the Schermerhorn to make way for the Pinnacle tower. Being sick the past couple of days has meant I have spent a lot of time in the apartment, and have a birds’ eye view of the construction process. It’s pretty cool. No, really. Well, relatively speaking. The pile driver is neat. They basically have this giant crane and they hook these giant steel I-beams and hoist them up vertically. Then there’s a diesel (I’m guessing) powered cylinder/chamber that fires a projectile repeatedly down onto the I-beam, driving it slowly into the ground. These form the basis of the periphery for the building – they fill in the spaces between the I-beams with wooden cross-beams that serve as a retaining wall for the earth/rock as they dig down.

So yeah, pretty cool. Not so good for the sleeping in the morning, though. They start pretty early. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to have a sinus/throat infection and to be trying to sleep while they are pile-driving at 7 in the morning, but I think this thought-exercise might help:

• Step 1: Swallow a handful of thumbtacks – the ones with the rounded flat metal head. That’s right, get them all down. Good.
• Step 2: Take a stapler – one of those big industrial metal ones. Aim it at your head and hit it firmly with the palm of your hand once every 2 seconds.
• Step 3: Try to sleep.