Sunday, March 22, 2009

Roadwork

When I first saw this sign, I thought perhaps the owner of the company was named Steve! However, I soon saw other companies around the islands with a similar name, so I figured that 'stevedores' had to have some kind of meaning.

Having lived either in the desert, or in the middle of the woods, most of my life, I have little or no knowledge of the sea and shipping.

The words stevedore, docker, dock labourer and longshoreman can have various waterfront-related meanings concerning loading and unloading ships, according to place and country.

Going on-line, I found the following: The word "stevedore" originated in Spain or Portugal, and entered the English language through its use by sailors. It started as a phonetic spelling of Spanish 'estibador' or Portuguese 'estivador',
which means: "a man who stuffs", here in the sense of "a man who loads ships", which was the original meaning of "stevedore".

I don't know, maybe there was a Spanish sailor named Steve...


It is clear that these are the guys that load and unload all the goods coming to our islands. Without them, we would not last long!

I thought I would give you a view of the progress of the roadwork on Tinian. There are two roads that will be repaved. I don't know their official name, but I call them Upper or North Main street and Lower or South Main street. For the most part, they are parallel streets that run through the middle of the village (where the Post Office, Mayors Office, Bank, Library, Hospital, etc. are located). They both run east/west from Broadway to the Tinian dock.
They are currently working on Upper Main, or North Main, and are making great progress. They have completely removed the old road and installed new road base, and are just finishing installing the drainage lines. Now they are rapidly completing the installation of the concrete curbing that will run along both sides of the new road.

The above picture shows the road as it hits Broadway, with the concrete curbing on both sides of the road. Looks nice, huh!

Going east the concrete curbing continues, with breaks to let people into businesses

There is a large catch-basin being dug in this area to collect all of the rainwater from the road

Here they are installing the framing for more concrete curbing near the Post Office

This is in front of the Post Office, and across the street from the Hospital.

Heading further east, in front of the Elementary School, the road is reading for curbing.

This section is next to the Library and Catholic Church

Heading further east, this shows the road just before it heads downhill towards the dock

The last section of road heading down to Tinian Dock

They are just finishing up the drainage line to the end, where they have created a large drainage field in a sandy area.

This crew is just finishing up the connection at the end of the drainage line.

And here is the end of the North road.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They are routes 201 and 202. 201 is the Southern one and runs in front of the Mayors office. That stevedore company is one of the oldest business on the Island. Could use some investment capital if you are intereted?