The bridge

I'm in the process of repairing small cracks on my kayak before selling it. On my way to the Canoe clubhouse in Kalmar, where I keep it, I have to pass the Öland bridge. It's been through a major repair and maintenance for several years but now they are fixing the last major issues, changing all the bearings between the actual bridge and the fundament. These bearings is what the bridge moves on when it expands in the heat or retracts in cold weather. Without them the bridge would crack and break. 

What you see to the right of the truck is a "Gondola" that is fastened on both sides of the bridge and runs under the actual road to give the workers a platform to work from. I've seen them being attached and they consist of the same material you can see in the blip, a sort of steel net, as you may have seen some stairs are made of. I can imagine it must feel awkward to walk around under the bridge on those since they are completely see through and there's nothing between you and the sea forty meters below. The work is, among lots of other things they do, to jack up the bridge a few centimetres, enough to remove the old bearings, put the new ones in and jack the bridge down again. Like changing a wheel on a car. I don't know how many bearings there are on each fundament but they reckon it will be ready during spring. They can't work all the time because it can be extremely windy and very cold during late autumn and winter. Exciting to see the work progress and it's amazing it affects the traffic so little.