10.25.2006

Thump. Thump. Thump.


Or, to be more precise:

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

That has been the intermittent accompaniment to my workdays for the last couple of weeks, as a piledriver sets the foundation for that new office building I mentioned in my previous post -- the one that'll be going up just north of our building. The one for which all those trees perished to make a parking lot.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

I can tell when I'm getting close to the office in the morning (assuming I'm not quite alert enough to readily recognize it anyway) when I start to hear...

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

I have no idea how many piles they've got to drive or how long this is going to go on. I'm just glad my office is near the opposite end of the building. Still, I'm keeping an eye on the knickknacks on my bookcase shelves, just in case they start to creep towards the edge.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

Sometimes it will be quiet for a while and I begin to forget about it. Maybe they've gone to lunch. Maybe they've quit for the day. Maybe they ran out of piles! And then,

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!


Not only do I miss the trees, I miss the quiet.

2 comments:

Shocho said...

I think that piledrivers are used much more in Virginia Beach than in other places that have dirt beneath them. I certainly never saw (heard?) many of them until I moved there.

Makes me worried to be in a tall building that's on stilts in sand. Not that that's a problem here in Denver.

Jason said...

90, 180, 270, 360, 450...

That's the count I use when I hear a piledriver. Someone who used to work at Decipher back in the day apparently used to work in construction and he said that it costs the company, all told, $90 each time the piledriver, well, drove.