You guys will not believe what an absolutely perfect Construction Girl vacation I’m having. Really. It’s unbelievable.

I’m staying at a friend’s beach house on the east coast for a little R&R. I was planning on some reading & writing, sand, and some cold beer. I arrived last night after dark. This morning I walked down to the beach to stick my feet in the ocean, which was stabbing cold. And even though the sand was blasting me in the high wind, the sun was shining and it was beautiful.

Right at the end of my street on the beach, however, was a huge construction sight. Now that I have been alerted to how interesting construction is, I stood a safe distance away and watched as a crane and an excavator were trying to drive pyles into the sand for a storm drain that will run out to the ocean. When the crane’s attachment tried to drive the beam into the ground, the beach under my feet vibrated. They were having trouble getting one in. I was watching to see how they would solve the problem when my luck took a sharp right into fantastic.

A man in a hard hat who I took for the site manager came over to talk to me. I hadn’t figured out what the project was and he kindly explained the whole drainage project that they’ve been running up and down the beach. I told him a bit about my job which piqued his interest and so he invited me in for a closer look.

The work had halted while they attached a hose with a bigger pump to the steel H-beam they were trying to drive into the sand. Apparently they had hit a layer of hard clay and had one last hope with the equipment they had on the site to get it in. I got to walk right down into the coffer dam that they had set up so they could work out in the surf.

The coffer dam is two series of steel sheet pyles that acted as a barrier to the surf so they could run this long pipe out into the sea. The waves would crash into it making a thunderous boom and spraying white water probably 50 feet into the air. Cool. Freezing actually.

The crane operator, John, had joined our conversation and he invited me to see his crane up close. (I know you are grinning at that sentence.) He said this crane was only a small one at 110 feet. He was certified for much bigger. I had not doubt. He let me get in. He let me operate it! I got to lift the huge vibrating hammer that combined with the 35 feet H-beam weighed about 9 thousand pounds. I never imagined they made vibrators that big.

Well, I obviously stuck out like a sore thumb on this job site. I had just happened into it, so I was not even dressed like Construction Girl: green topsiders, bright pink hoodie, jeans with flowers embroidered on them. So I had attracted the attention of the other guys who were also eager to show me their big equipment. Man it’s great to be a girl!

Before my impromptu two hours on the job were over, Jeff gave me a lesson I’ll never forget on the excavator. We were pulling up hoses out on the end of the temporary sand jetty that the coffer dam created. The poor guys on the ground hooking the hoses to the excavator really got sprayed by the waves up so close to the front. But it was so cool to be right there in the action - probably cooler for me up in the excavator than for the guys with their giant hoses in the surf. Beats the hell out of office work.

Then to top off the day, since they had to stop work because they didn’t have a strong enough pump on the job, I got to push sand on the beach with a big bulldozer. It was unbelievable. What luck!

So John & Jeff, thank you for a fabulous day. Getting driven by pyle drivers is definitely a memory for a lifetime.

I did get pictures, but with an old fashioned camera. I’ll see if I can figure out how to scan them in and post them once I get back to the office.

Was I right? Amazing. What a vacation!