Tag: jumping

Officially Odd

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Drawbridges, Observation5 Comments

Recently, this sign was installed on all four corners of my drawbridge.

Bridge Sign

No one gave me a heads up about this. I just looked up one day and saw the workmen drilling holes on my beautiful bridge. It kind of felt like a violation. I take pride in my job and I love this bridge.

First of all, let me just say that I agree that jumping from a bridge is a really bad idea. You don’t know what jagged, rusty debris has been lodged beneath the surface over the years. You could hit a protection pier and break every bone in your body. (This has happened.) You could hit a passing boat. If the bridge is tall enough, it’s most likely going to be suicide by stupidity.

But can I just say that this is a very weirdly worded sign? Fist of all, why is “consequences” capitalized? Second, not all jumps are fatal. Third, “tragic” is a little vague. And why would it come after fatal, and not before? Aren’t fatalities tragic? Do they have to be broken out into their own little horrifying groups?

For an official city sign, it seems rather foreboding, emotional and repetitive. And dare I say that these signs are not going to prevent the stupid young boys, who are wont to do the jumping, from exercising this particular Seattle rite of passage? I wish people took signs seriously, but they don’t. If they did, I can think of a half dozen other signs that are needed here, based on the daily shenanigans that I witness.

I have no idea who designed these signs, or what prompted them to be put up at this particular moment in history, but here they are. I suspect that we’ve merely provided people with another place for their graffiti. I also suspect that these signs will always bug me. But these things are way beyond my paygrade.

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A New Unit of Measurement: The Quagmire

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Humor, Observation4 Comments

My Dachshund, Quagmire, is 31 inches from nose to tail tip. (Eight inches of that is tail.) The reason I’m telling you this is that I find I often use him as a very precise unit of measurement. This is important, so pay attention.

It takes 2 1/2 Quagmires to span the width of our king-sized bed. I know this because he often inches me from one side of it to the other in the course of a night. It’s critical to know how much bed you’ve got left. Safety first.

I also know how many Quagmires a Quagmire must be from the front door before I can open it. (Four.) If I don’t take this into account, he’ll bolt outside and head straight into traffic. I don’t know what it is about the highway that intrigues him so, but it’s a wonder he hasn’t been squashed flat.

I’ve also learned the hard way that all dog bowls must be at least 5 Quagmires apart or chaos will ensue. He’s very territorial about his kibble. Believe me, it isn’t pretty.

He only has to run about 6 Quagmires before he reaches the end of my extension leash and practically yanks my arm out of its socket.

We’ve had to install 10 Quagmires-worth of fencing to keep his sneaky little butt out of the strawberries and tomatoes in the back yard.

There aren’t enough Quagmires in the world to keep us from smelling his musk when he has rolled in something dead. He seems quite proud of this.

You can throw a toy about 5 Quagmires away and he’ll chase it, but he’ll only bring it about 1 Quagmire of the way back. A retriever, he is not.

The interesting thing about this unit of measurement is that it increases to 40 inches in the vertical. Despite his stubby little legs, he routinely jumps chest height. So you always have to consider the vertical Quagmire before leaving any food unattended. As far as he’s concerned, anything less than a Quagmire above the floor is community property.

But the very best part about this measurement is that it only takes one Quagmire to fill my heart with love.

Quagmire

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Do a Search of Women and Drawbridges

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Drawbridges, Feminism, Observation1 Comment

A friend of mine recently did a Google search of Women and Drawbridges, and what came up was disheartening. Not one word about the many amazing female bridge operators out there. Sadly, nothing about this blog, either.

No. It was all about the stupid things women have done on bridges. Especially this woman, who famously got stuck on an automated bridge as it was rising.

o-WOMAN-DANGLES-FROM-BRIDGE-facebook

She has become the poster child for all the foolish pedestrians who ignore warnings when a bridge is opening. (And did she have to be wearing that tacky shirt while doing so? Jeez.) I see them every day. (She also happens to be the perfect argument for why drawbridges should never be automated.)

Another thing that pops up is the woman who died after falling from an opening bridge. (Please take those gongs seriously, folks. Getting to your destination on time is rarely worth your life!)

And then there’s this insane and obviously faked video of a woman jumping across an opening bridge. “Do not attempt”, it says. Uh, yeah. That’s putting it mildly.

For what it’s worth, after years of observation, I can say with a certain amount of authority that stupidity on drawbridges knows no gender.

The reason I find these search results so frustrating is that I’ve been a bridgetender for 17 years. I’ve worked with dozens of other female operators, and we are every bit as capable as our male counterparts. And yet inevitably I’ve encountered people in positions of influence who openly state that they don’t think women should be bridgetenders.

What is this, 1950?

Yes, it’s a male-dominated profession. I have no idea why. It’s something that I’ve had to adjust to throughout my career. There’s a constant push back from certain sources. It can be exhausting.

One male coworker refers to a female coworker of mine as “the little blonde,” which completely discounts her intelligence and capabilities, and reduces her to her physical attributes. It makes me want to scream. Another coworker referred to an assault incident between two women as a “cat fight.”

For God’s sake. What an ignorant world we live in. I’d clutch my pearls if I weren’t so busy cleaning the motor oil out from under my fingernails.

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