About a half a mile from our house in Shanghai there is some serious road construction taking place. The building up of infrastructure is a major push for the Chinese to stimulate their economy and I must say when they build a road; they build a road. The one being built near our home is an elevated highway - elevated at 40ft. Amazing.
Their process for building roads is that they pour the concrete on-site - there are no preform slabs to drop into place or
asphalt to lay with a nice machine. The challenge is the road is to be 40 ft in the air and the forms must be set where the road is going to be. So you see in the picture above scaffolding. This holds the concrete forms in place while the road is being poured gallon by gallon from an army of concrete pumper trucks. I must say there is literally miles and miles of scaffolding... each one set in place and bolted together by hand.
The crews basically work in shifts 24/7 and they are rocking and rolling 7 days a week...welding bar, moving scaffolds, pouring concrete...over and over. The only real day off they get are during national holidays of which there is a couple hand full of days.
You can see on the picture below truly how high this road is being formed as you can see the stairway (in green) going to the top of the road form. I would guess this is a good 4 to 5 stories high.
Once the concrete is formed and hardens...they literally just take the scaffolding down and move it to the next section.
Until next time ponder this...the small little portable shack you see in the front of this picture below with the dirt walking path is where the workers live. Think about that over your summer commute through the season of road construction to your vacation property.
We planned a fishing trip one early morning. We connected up with Alibi Fishing and the brave souls that ventured out were my dad, my mom, Brandon, and myself.
The captain of the boat told us that the worst day fishin' was better than the best day at work.... so having this in mind we set out for fishing spot "F". On the way there we trolled for marlin but didn't see anything or have any hits. The waters were a bit rough and mom ended up with her head in the bucket. She was "green" for most of the trip so I had to take the picture. If it is any concession, we did feel sorry for her....
We then had one of the deck hands slice up a couple and enjoyed the fine taste of fresh, fresh tuna. Although Brandon and I were the only ones in the mood for some fresh sushi. The next evening for dinner we cured the rest of the fillets and enjoyed some of the best fish fresh from the Pacific Ocean to the grill on the deck of the beach house.
We also celebrated a birthday(s) when we were in Hawaii as Ava and Caden turned 3 on April 9th. Time flies... ;) 
One of the "must do" things on the Big Island of Hawaii is to visit Volcano National Park. One of the world's most active volcanoes - Kilauea (kill 0 way ah) - is located here. Just last year Kilauea became active again and started spewing steam. You can see Ava pointing to the steam in the picture above.
The above family picture was not taken on 2/26/2009 - my mom's camera had the wrong date programmed. We'll see if that becomes a future topic around the family table when we say...remember back in 2009 when we visited the volcano? Was that in February or in March? But now, because of this blog...we'll know the difference.
We also took a 1 mile hike down to the point where the lava runoff meets the Pacific Ocean. This is located near the southern point of the Big Island and we were told it creates some 50 acres of "new land" each year. The picture below doesn't do it justice as the steam cloud that is created is truly immense.
This was not an easy hike on the lava rock with two 3 year-
Until next time... ponder how life has a way of creating itself. Out of barren dry volcanic stone sprouts this delicate flowering bush.
