Snowed In

We went up to the Shak last weekend and it was so sunny and warm I decided to stay on for a few days. I split a bunch of wood, went for long walks, and read a couple books. On Tuesday it rained, then it got chilly. The rain turned to slush and ice. On Wednesday it snowed.




I went for a walk in the snow. It was falling in big chunks, like a billion white moths coming in for landing. An eagle was perched above the meadow. It startled as I walked by and flew off in the snow bobbing and weaving trying not to get hit. A half dozen blue herons were standing ankle-deep in the bay, hunkered down trying to keep their feet warm.

By mid-day Thursday the snow melted into a thick layer of slush on the roads and the runway. The Flying Fish dropped in to rescue me. We flew out into thick cold calm air. 10 miles south it was 10 degrees warmer. The San Juans were still covered with snow but on the mainland the only white in the fields were flocks of snow geese and swans.

Really bad report card.

Report cards were a pretty big deal in our house growing up. A's were expected, B's caused issues. You know, like no Mork & Mindy for a couple weeks. C's were unthinkable - the Atari get's unplugged and no more Pac-Man until those grades improve. Even now, I don't remember if any of us came back with C's on anything other than handwriting (where the only excuse was a broken bone, a plaster cast and a sling). If there were any other C's I'm sure to have blocked them out along with any repercussions that went along with the event...

Which is all to say that I've never seen a report card as bad as the one issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers last month. This would be the 2009 Report Card for America's Infrastructure. I would not want to be on the same block when my mom got a look at these grades. Let's just say that the highest grade is in Solid Waste: C+. In Brief: Aviation: D Bridges: C Dams: D Drinking Water: D- Energy: D+ Roads: D- Solid Waste: C+ Wastewater: D-

Now, granted, just about every civil and structural engineer I've ever worked with used an overdesign factor of 50-100% so, I'd expect the grading to be harsh. But the fact is, we really haven't spent much energy on upgrading large-scale infrastructure projects in a long time. Most of us in the construction world have been building houses, offices, hotels... There aren't too many folks in the private sector with large scale infrastructure construction experience. At least not here in the US. All the cool jobs have been happening in Asia lately.

This isn't to say we don't have the ability or the manpower to get the work done. But there hasn't been the motivation, the focus and the discipline it takes to get funding for non-sexy projects like bridges and roads and power transmission stations and water treatment facilities. Especially when we can build condos, casinos and shopping centers. Kinda like, who wants to do homework?