Going To Need A Bigger Shovel

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Doh!  Holding up world commerce.  Feel sorry for the captain.

Nino have you actually Ran a Shovel in the last few weeks, or years ?? Just curious.

Do your hands fit a Shovel ?

I have many different models,  but the Suez Canal situation is more complex.

Nah my shovel days are long over, but the arthritis in my hands is real from the jack hammer I used to run when I worked for the gas company. Particularly the rock drill for the concrete. We didn't have any fancy pizza cutter things I see them using now. That said I worked with guys who talked about the old timers they worked with who dug every hole by hand before they had backhoes. That is some crazy shit.

That digging machine looks like a toy next to the ship.

^ Yeah Tonka toy vs.  Godzilla.  Who would have ever imagined that they let 12-year old kids run Mega - Container ships delivering Goods to World commerce ?

Sounds pretty far- fetched, yet it happened on TV.

I actually take old Shovels and clean them up with various abrasive tools,  then paint them garish Colors (bright shades so they don't fade into the woodscape).

Wooden handles are sanded and get a few coats of Polyurethane or similar.

Pick - Axes,  Brush - Hooks, Machetes and stuff get the same Tool Spa treatment.

Something like this was bound to happen. Ships have gotten significantly bigger in the last 100 years, but the main canals have not.

I need to get a new Razorback shovel.

They expanded the Panama Canal a few years back to accommodate the huge ships they are sailing these days.    Chinese have been talking about building a new canal across Nicaragua.  Hope that doesn't happen.   It will fuck with the unique ecosystem of Lake Nicaragua.   

I stand corrected, though I'm guessing they didn't make Suez wider!

Should be noted that's actually a long reach excavator, which by comparison makes a "regular" excavator also look like something of a toy.

maybe a cat 320 or Case CX type, it's hard to tell from those photos.

I wonder how much coke, meth, heroin, fentanyl, x, etc. are being held up from their normal flow. Expect price spikes next week at walmart and the local dealer.

This thread reminds me of the retired grandpas in Spanish villages: After their mid-morning bocadillo (small sandwich) and carajillo (espresso w/ Spanish brandy), they take a paseo to whatever construction action is nearby.  Then they stand with their hands clasped behind their sweatered backs, light a cigar and make comments on all the construction details... for at least an hour, sometimes more.
 

So, there must be a Zoner version of this scene....

>>>This thread reminds me of the retired grandpas in Spanish villages: After their mid-morning bocadillo (small sandwich) and carajillo (espresso w/ Spanish brandy), they take a paseo to whatever construction action is nearby. 

That is universal. When I was in China all the construction sites had plywood around them blocking any view but they had cut out holes so that the men could stick their heads through and watch. It goes beyond the humans as well. I got a behind the scenes tour of the SF Zoo and the Director told us the story of the gorilla enclosure multimillion dollar up-grade. The staff was worried that the gorillas would be stressed during the construction so they built a big wall to shield them from all of it. On th first day of construction the male gorillas climbed to the highest point so that they could look over the wall and watch the construction which they did for the entirety of the project. I'm sure they also had opinions on everything the humans were doing wrong. 

 

^^^^ love the gorilla story!

Pulled it out. Not too shabby.

Mission Accomplished?! Reports are that the tug boats and tide have finally got the ship back afloat

Well, that's kind of disappointing.

Nino, you a highway guy? That is crazy they used to hand dig those holes. Painters still talk about how every thing used to be brushed up until the seventies which I find to be insane as well. That means that the Empire State Building was likely brushed by hand in three months. Wild

No not really. I worked with the gas leak crew as a summer job when I was in college so I did about a year of that. I did have to jump out of the way of car that almost drove into our hole when I was flagging.

This was in the 80's and the old timer who dug holes by hand stopped by one day when we were working. He was probably in his 70's or 80's at the time. Hard to tell he just looked old to me. This was in Nashua NH where at the time they still had a network of low pressure cast iron gas lines that leaked all the time.