The power pole!

The power company has been doing some line maintenance along the road that borders our subdivision.  They're using a ginormous crane to put in new poles.  We walked up to see them install a new power pole yesterday.  I called Grandpa (my Dad) to see if he wanted to join us to observe.  Grandpa met us up there and provided insight (Grandpa used to do this at the telephone company)  as to what was going on, how they do various operations, and to entertain Skyler.  One of the many benefits to having a kid is you can hang out at construction sites, work areas, drive your garden tractor all over the neighborhood and everyone thinks you're just entertaining your kid!

See the huge crane?!  See the shitty air?!

See the huge bucket truck?!

The bucket truck on the ground.  Note that it's all wheel drive.

The giant Grove crane.

The boom reaches over 200 feet!

A lineman getting ready to "top" the old pole.  Topping is cutting the upper portion off.

Barney Backhoe!

Skyler's view for Barney Backhoe.

Barney Backhoe gets his name from the Ertl "My first collectible" toy backhoe named Barney.  Barney is also in the "Johnny tractor" series of children's books that we read at our house constantly.

Barney is used to collect the insulators and cross arms from the old pole.  You can see the old pole being lowered on the right.

Picking the new pole.  The new pole is 95(!) feet tall.

Higher..

Higher...

There's a digger truck behind the bucket truck.  He'll use his boom with the pinchers to guide the new pole past the secondaries which are still live with 10-15,000 volts!

Up in the air!  A picture doesn't do this crane justice.  It's massive!

Swing it around more live wires!  We were standing closer but got the hell out of there when we saw this.

200 feet!

The lineman are getting ready.

The digger truck guides it.

Almost in the hole...

Now the crane operator has to raise the wires up to the insulators.  He grabbed the wires using only the crane!

The lineman in the bucket truck will attach the wires to the insulators.

Skyler looked more entertained earlier.

The Grove 4115L crane.  It can lift 115 tons! Maximum tip height is 207 feet!

Bye Barney Backhoe!  BTW, everything was idling the entire time.  No wonder our air is shit.

The pole truck.  It too is all wheel drive.

The pole ID tag.  The H3 is the pole class, the 95 is the height.  Note the copper ground wire.