RESURGO!

Now, some thred drift...

I cringe at cold weather pours. Once, on a pour at an aircraft parking apron, I called the flight service station and asked for the latest weather. The temp was to drop to -5C by morn and a cold 50 kph wind was blowing so I instructed the contractor to make preparartions for protection. He was a rookie at paving with only money and balls who had bid low and had not an idea of what to do.

I told him to get at least 20 mil polyethelene sheets and run them perpendicular to the rails (steel tubes 150 mm above the deck) of the paving train, fasten them to the rails with the overlaps away from the wind, and sand bag the exterior of the rails. He found some 20 mil.

At about 10 PM, we were sharing a pizza and some ales in my vehicle when the first sheet was cut and being placed. Four teenaged lads, one at each corner of the sheet were approaching the freshly poured bay, fighting with the sheet in the wind. A gust of wind caught the sheet and one of the lads at a downwind corner who weighed about 60 kg soaking wet rose slowly to about 1 m off the ground.... then, like a rocket, to about 2.5 m up... then back to the ground... then back up.

The contractor asks me, "Suppose he'll eventually let go?" I said, "Well, if he does and that plastic flaps on the crete it'll cost ya." He rolled down his window in panic and hollered at the other lads, "Quit laughing and help that man. And from now on I want two fat fuckers on every corner."

I felt sorry for the little fellow but all was fine and we laughed when the foreman said to him, "Yer nickname is Dawwwg on accounta you looked like one a them there little dogs chomping down on sumthin and swinging in the breeze."

Of course, if the little fellow had got flapped off the sheet when he was up in the air, he could have been hurt and that would have cost the contractor a fine and possibly more but I never did get the chance to mention that.