These guys are amazing

Imagine building two steel-and-concrete football fields one on top of the other, doing it 15 stories up in the air, then cutting out the same size piece of a near-80-year-old bridge and hoping that relieving the stresses by doing so doesn’t make the whole thing shift a few feet up, down or sideways, then putting your new football fields in place of the old ones.

And getting the whole job done in time for the morning rush hour traffic Tuesday, after the three-day holiday weekend. Caltrans was smart in hiring the guy who moves heaven and earth to get a job done, and is handsomely rewarded for it. His last job on the approach to the bridge when a gasoline truck burned its whole load and caused one of the approaches to collapse was done so quickly that he used his bonus money to buy himself a new jet plane. He deserved it.

They’re using Dawn dish detergent to grease the skids, by the way, and 5,000-ton hydraulic jacks to hold things up. At this writing, the new piece is in place and ready to be tied off with rawhide made from yaks. Nothing is tougher when it dries, plus it’s easy to remove when they’re done with this detour in 2013.

Read all about it in the San Francisco Chronicle. Photo: Michael Macor / the Chronicle