Post #696689 by No No on Fri, Oct 18, 2013 7:48 PM

Time passed and things were not well with red beard. I am very sorry, but I do not remember his true name. It seems that he contracted a parasite in his belly while in Central America that went undetected for months after he arrived with Tex's boat in Tahiti. He lost a lot of weight and all his energy. He was put on "rest leave" so that medical treatment could bring him back to good health. An understudy of sorts, "the wild A-rab" took his place. In general terms, he operated the crane with reckless abandon. In actuality, he somehow got the job done fast, efficiently and safely which was a key factor in keeping the project on schedule.
Let me digress for a moment and explain one of the most consternating problems this project faced. In simple terms....French, English, Tahitian. Arabic, German and Chinese. Maybe there were more languages spoken that I was not aware of, but those were the ones I knew of. To communicate to "The wild A-rab" just exactly what I wanted was done with sign language and a wing and a prayer.
As the project came out of the ground, rising from floor 12 to floor 1, There were certain landscape elements that needed to be put in place. Palm trees needed to be planted between the floor groupings. With a dump truck and back-hoe we went into the countryside, bought full grown palm trees from land owners for $25 +/- dug them up and brought them back to the site. Large holes were dug between the rooms. The palm trees were placed in nets and secured to the crane drop line. I mounted the root ball and away we went!! I directed the decent, twelve stories down, with hand signals. The tree was successfully placed in the planting hole. The process was repeated many times over.