It was indeed a great adventure. We finished loading all of the tools and smaller bits early this morning in preparation for the journey into Vancouver to install the Catoro trees. Our team consisted of Peter, Matt, Grant and myself. As we headed out the driveway with the two trucks and trailers we checked the traffic report and discovered the freeway was plugged in two places with traffic accidents. An alternate route on side roads was decided. It was slow going with many delays for construction and a train that seemed to take forever. We arrived onsite almost two hours later than we had originally planned. One of the owners greeted us excitedly and gave us a key for the building. Then the real work began. We carefully untied the load and using two hand winches removed the heavy trees from the trailer - one winch pulling the biggest pair of trees off the trailer and one winch stopping things from getting out of control as it came down the ramp. Slow and steady would win today’s race. After carefully surveying the possible routes to the front door of the building we settled on the long way around the block. The sidewalks were a little wider with less slide slope, the terrain less steep and it had much less foot traffic. Three long trips were made to the front of the building and then the hand winches were used to carefully ease the heavy pieces through the front door with an inch of clearance on either side - just like we had planned.
We then sent up the two scaffolds and winched the tree onto it’s back, reset and carefully tipped it upright. It was slow going but worked incredibly well. Crowbars and the winches were used to slide the tree across the floor into its final position and then bolted permanently into place. - all without a scratch. This was repeated three times over about six hours. The owners came back just as we finished and were ecstatic with the result.
It was a pleasure to have a team that worked so well together on this difficult installation. There was no drama during the install no matter what challenge we encountered along the way and there were many. Instead we had many calm discussions of possible solutions, and then agreed on a path forward. The result was a great adventure and another flawless install.
