Building a park of this complexity in less than 200 calendar days is a challenge to say the least. Things are not always done in the order they should be. Instead it is often about just getting things done as fast as we can while staying out of way of the other crews trying to do their part. On this site the crews have been cooperative and friendly, all doing their best to accomodate the needs of everyone else.
With the park opening now eleven days away, the concrete decks can not be put off any longer. That means we will be doing some painting over finished concrete - not ideal but necessary in this case. Our compromise is to paint the lower part of as much as possible so we don't have to cut in later along the concrete deck. The thing is however that the weather controls where and when we can paint and June in these parts means we have recieved our share of rain which slows us down.
Today was concrete day for a good portion of the project. Much our work in these areas had the paint base coats finished but not the final glazes. Our task today was to race against the concrete crew, doing our best to stay ahead of them and far enough ahead that our paint was mostly dry by the time they got there. It was a struggle but by lunch time we had finished all of the areas they were placing the concrete in today.
As fast as we moved on they poured the concrete behind us.
Just because we beat the concrete crew to the punch today however didn't mean we could rest on our laurels. Tomorrow morning at 8:00 am sharp the race will begin once more in the next areas to recieve the red concrete. We used this afternoon to get a head start on those areas. The concrete will be finished inside the gates tomorrow so we laid down the base coats on everything remaining grey and then moved on to the glazes as soon as the paint was dry. If you look closely in the next picture you can see six of the crew busy with brushes on the saloon building. More were busy around the back and elsewhere on the site paint was flying as well.
Tomorrow is the second to last concrete pour on the project which means we will push through Thursday to win the race. Ready... set... GO!
-grampa dan