Day 1 – Travel to West Virginia

Sunday, Nov 18, 2018

I picked up Roger at 7:30 am before driving back to Niagara and picking up Justin, Bernie, Spencer and Braeden.

It was a cool morning with temperatures around 2 C ( 36 F ).

By 8:15, we were on our way.   We drove to the duty free shop, but the Tim Hortons was closed for renovations so we continued to the border and arrived there at 9 am.   There were 6 cars in front of us and of course, I chose the slowest lane.

It took approximately 20 minutes to reach the border guard but when we did, he took our passports and paperwork, asked us a few questions about our trip and then directed us to door #2 of the customs office.

As soon as we entered the customs office, we were called to the desk, asked a few questions and then directed to sit down in the waiting room until my name was called.   After 15 minutes, we were called back to the desk, given our passports and sent on our way.

I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to cross the border so efficiently.  We now had lots of time to get to Moundsville, so when we reached the McDonalds overpass in Hamburg, we stopped for coffee and a breakfast sandwich.

The roads were dry and the temperature was 5 C by the time we reached Meadville, where we stopped for lunch at the local Perkins restaurant.

By 1 pm we were back on our way and drove the last few hours to Moundsville where the temperature was 14 C ( 57 F ).    In moundsville, we met, Dan the MDS office administrator, who checked us into the Sleep Inn.  At 5 pm we met the site director, Donald Horst and the long term staff.    In total there are 12 of us who will be working on the bridge project this week.

We were informed that we will be working on a 60 ft bridge has 4 steel beams and one of the outside beams has a 2 inch “ sag “ in it, so it can’t be used in its current state.  There are several options for repairing the problem, however, none of them are quick or easy fixes, so we will have to wait for a solution to be adopted.   Fortunately there are other things we will be able to do while we wait to find out what the solution will be.

After our orientation we went to a Chinese Buffet for dinner, before returning to the hotel for the night.