Building Gates
For two days now I have worked as part of an eight member team erecting gates for Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Central Park. Each gate weighs about one hundred and fifty pounds and takes about ten minutes to erect once the materials are in place.
When I arrived at the Command Center on Monday morning I learned that I would act as crew captain for my group of eighteen. I was assigned a map of area in the southwest corner of the Park near Columbus Circle.
My team and I have to erect ninety-five gates by Friday afternoon.
The going was tough to begin. It took time to get the needed materials and figure out the best way to transport them. Before lunch on the first day we only erected four gates.
After a hearty meal we returned to build another twelve.
Today, we pushed hard in the morning putting up ten but only managed to erect fourteen in the afternoon. At this pace we won't make it but my group members are very prideful and don't want other groups to come rescue us on Friday.
To justify our delay I would like to point of a few important facts. First, I looked at our map on the first day and decided to start at the furthest point from our drop site. This way, we would get the hard stuff out of the way first. It just so happens that these areas are the most hilly and tucked behind some large rock formations. There are many parts of the park far more difficult than ours but we have encountered our share of delay due to a stuck load of materials.
The other justification I offer is that my groups is made up of a seventy year old man, a middle aged woman, a union professional, a thirty-something woman, a twenty-something woman, and myself - a man unaccustomed to manual labor. We are a tough group, always eager to work, but we are a little slow.
Hopefully we will speed up before the weather turns against us in the next few days.
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Who is this guy?
glad to see you back in action.
and stop making excuses. youre the best damn two-week installation art crew captain I've ever seen. ;)
I was going to make a snide comment about the Union guy holding up production (boy, the stories I could relay about my Dad's days on the assembly lines at Cat with the UAW), but naw.