If anyone of you tried to drive through east Knoxville on Saturday, then you most likely experienced some difficulty. Pictured above is the reason why. It's a big, honkin'... red thing.
Actually, it's a steam power generator for Virginia Power, and it caused me to have to get out of my comfy bed at 3:45 am.
I have no idea what it's gonna do or why it's so big or any other details, but I do know that it cost 40 million dollars, plus an additional 10 million to move. It came from Germany via ship to Forks of the River Industrial Park.
My job, and that of three of my co-workers, was to stay ahead of this thing and make sure the phone cables were high enough for it to pass under. Mission accomplished. Barely.
In the photo, you can see just how close it came to the cables. The shiny, silver thing in the lower-right corner is the fairlead on the aerial lift I was in. We use the fairlead to grab the cables and move them around. I was approximately 20 feet over the road when this thing passed and I very easily could have reached down and touched it as it went by me.
It really was amazing to see something this big moving down the road. It was around 225 feet long and weighed around 640 tons. That's 1,280,000 pounds. Earlier in the day, I was standing about two feet from it's tires as it went by me and I could feel the ground undulating as it rolled by. It was kinda freaky feeling.
So, I snapped this picture after it went under the last cables I was responsible for. Two minutes later, I was packed up and heading for home, nine hours after it first moved out. Nine hours. Seven miles.
Anyway, nothing of any great importance but it was something you don't do everyday. And it was gravy overtime. We only had to lift cables about three times. The rest of the time, we waited.
Oh! By the way, this was the first one. I'm told the next one is bigger. And is it just me or do the "OVERSIZE LOAD" signs make you laugh?
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
