JULY 17, 2007

SIDEWALKS & WORK PARTY

by Mike Winter

At the June membership meeting the club voted to have four foot wide concrete sidewalks installed in front of all four shade buildings. Building 1 and 4 would have a full forty foot walk and building 2 and 3 would have shorter sidewalks to accommodate the access ramps. The work was to be done by J & J Concrete Services Inc. (941)812-8014. which is owned by James Miller. The Board of Directors decided to close the field and hold a work party while the concrete was being poured.

Monday morning, James Miller, of J & J Concrete, poses for pictures.

Did I happen to mention that these guys like to start early.

7am Tuesday morning the concrete starts to flow and by 8am all forms are full. The concrete was pumped with the truck first in the east parking lot and then moving to the west lot.

Notice the perimeter trench in the left picture - the extra thickness helps prevent cracking.

Would you believe that I did most of the toweling? Neither would I; Ken, who works for J & J, really knows how to work concrete and the project close to completion.

Jeff Burkholder, who owns a lawn service business, brought his work trailer along with a helper and they had all of the grass cut in about an hour. When I say all the grass I mean the grass runway, the paved runway perimeter, around the parking lots and both sides of the entrance road. In fact the only grass that was not cut was directly in front of the shade buildings - flying grass and wet concrete is not a good combination.

Al Jensen eats some weeds, Warren Woodmansee settles in on the club trailer, Warren and Chris Calvo kill the weeds along the fence and Al, Warren and Bill Kimbrell man the killer train. They are killing anything that tries to grow through the edge of the runway.

Group shot of the work party - one taken by me and one by Al Jensen.