Road Painting

I was sitting here, blogging, minding my own business when I looked out the window and saw a chance to learn something new.

I watched as a tractor pulling a road sweeper passed by the house. Then, a county truck followed, painting new yellow lines down the middle of the road. It stopped and backed up and stopped again. And there it sat. And sat.

Seeing as how school was done for the day and the kids and I look for every opportunity to learn something new, I called to the kids to get their shoes on. I grabbed my camera and headed outside, sure the trucks would continue on their way before we made it up there. They didn't.

We called across the road to the workers and asked if we could come over and watch what they were doing. "Sure. Come on over, it's ok," a crewman said.

We looked both ways, cause I'm careful like that, and crossed the road. They were loading bags of something into their machine- thingy. I assumed it was paint stuff. The crewman told me it was tiny pellets added to the paint to make it reflective on the road. Never knew that. He also told us the paint dries almost immediately. My brain is growing, I tell you.

We checked out the sprayer and saw how it had two spray nozzles. One painted the solid line and the other would paint the dotted "passing zone" line. We saw the long arm that stuck out in front of the paint truck. They line it up with the old lines and it will paint the new ones right over top.

Once they were done reloading, we crossed the road and watched the magic in action as they drove away.

Don't you ever see something and wonder how it's done or made? Maybe it's just my mind always working, but I'd love to have every job in the world for a day or two so I could see how things work. It's fascinating!