Changing a light bulb is no big deal. Unless the fixture sits at the pinnacle of the Bay Bridge, 379 feet above the water.
Most Marylanders associate the bridge with summer excursions to the Eastern Shore. But maintenance work never stops, even in the biting cold of February.
There are potholes to fill, bearings to grease, huge bolts to tighten, popped rivets to replace, signs to clean and snow to plow, from Sandy Point to Kent Island and back.
It's more than just a job.
The state workers who tend the twin spans have developed a fondness for the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge, with all its grace -- and quirks.
To the 22-man crew, the bridge seems more like a ship than a 4-mile-long Erector Set of towers, suspension cables, roadways, causeways and pilings stuck in the mud.
"We try to take care of her, and keep her looking good," says Billy Moore, 39, the maintenance supervisor, whose father once held the same job.
Each span has two giant towers, from which roadways are suspended so ships will have clear sailing underneath. For the bridge crew, no task is more challenging than replacing the bulbs in the aircraft warning beacon atop each tower.
"It's like mountain climbing," says Dennis Raab. "Except there are sea gulls."
Mr. Raab, Dino Marzola and Tommy Boyd did it Tuesday, reaching the top of a tower on the westbound span by clambering up a 14-inch-thick suspension cable.
To air traffic, the bridge amounts to a man-made peak. "For safety reasons, any structure more than 200 feet tall must be marked or lighted," says Joan Brown, regional spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Just as important are the 186 lights beneath the spans to help ships pass safely. Bridge workers replace the bulbs from catwalks under the roadways.
"It's extremely important that those navigation lights be maintained," says Ann Deaton, bridge administrator for the U.S. Coast Guard's Mid-Atlantic region. Without them, ships' crews might not see the bridge until the last minute, and that could be "disastrous," she says.
Mr. Moore agrees. If there were no aerial beacons or navigation lights, "We wouldn't have a bridge to worry about," he says.
Breathtaking panorama
Maintenance men jump at the chance to service the aerial beacons, Mr. Moore says. Cable-climbing provides a breathtaking panorama and a break from the whir and rumble of cars and trucks on the bridge deck. Some workers take their cameras.
"It's serene and peaceful up there," says Mr. Boyd, as he and his co-workers deftly slip over the bridge railing, latch their safety belts to hand cables and plant their feet on the suspension cable.
That walkway is their shaky passport to the sky. Nothing else stands between them and the choppy waters of the bay, more than 200 feet below, where a rescue boat is stationed before each cable-climbing expedition in case a worker falls.
Up the men go, with the dexterity of experienced seamen climbing the rigging of a tall ship. "Your eyes open wide, your heart rate increases and you get a real adrenalin rush," Mr. Raab says. "You feel like a daredevil."
Sometimes they even look down. The men examine the cable for sea gull droppings, which could cause them to slip, while holding firmly to the guide wires at their sides. Climbers tend to grasp those wires so hard, says Mr. Moore, that "when they come down, the palms of their safety gloves are worn clear through."
Finally the crew reaches its destination and steps onto a small metal platform, a crow's nest of sorts, the home of the aerial beacon. Each one has two bulbs, and both are replaced even if just one has expired.
When finished, the climbers radio the office to turn on the power, then huddle around the beacon to warm their hands before starting down.
They also take a minute to enjoy the view.
"I can see Baltimore!" shouts Mr. Raab, spotting the Key Bridge and the Bethlehem Steel facility at Sparrows Point.
Mr. Marzola surveys the beauty of the Bay Bridge itself. "On a sunny day like this, that silver bridge just shines," he says.
% Then it's time to go.
A dangerous descent
Descending the cable can be dangerous, says Mr. Raab, because "your feet want to go faster than the rest of you. The only way to slow down is to squeeze the hand cables."
The 45-minute adventure ends without incident; the rescue boat chugs off.
With four aerial beacons to maintain, the bridge crew must make the climb several times a year, even in the dead of winter if necessary.
Actually, some jobs on the spans are best done in cold weather. For example, winter is the right time to give the bridge a lube. "She's opening up, she's expanding," Mr. Moore says. "Some of the metal is shifting and moving, and that's good. When those bridge parts shift, it allows us to clean and lubricate them."
Maintenance crews also repair potholes, using special lightweight jackhammers to keep from drilling all the way through the bridge; scrape and paint rusty portions of the structure; caulk the seams in some pilings; and tighten thousands of nuts and bolts, some so large they require a 50-pound wrench and two men to turn them.
"People ask, 'What is there to taking care of a bridge?'" says Mr. Moore who, on a busy day, drives 50 miles back and forth on the spans, looking and listening for trouble. "We could spend three days a week doing nothing but potholes."
Hidden maintenance
Workmen doing road repairs must deal with gusty crosswinds, speeding vehicles and the normal quaking caused by the suspension bridge itself. But much of the routine maintenance goes unseen by motorists who would be surprised to find work crews creeping along the catwalks beneath their tires on the bridge's underside.
"It's awkward moving along those catwalks, especially while carrying tools and other equipment," Mr. Moore says. Mishaps are rare, though; the bay has never claimed a bridge maintenance worker and seldom swallows their tools.
Once, while repairing a railing in winter, Mr. Moore's crew dropped a socket wrench off the side of the bridge. The tool landed on the frozen bay. The crew managed to retrieve the wrench by lowering a magnet tied to a piece of string.
Some of the crew's odd-shaped tools are forged by the workers themselves, such as a 3-foot wrench as big as a barbell. The huge bolts that hold the bridge together require Gulliver-sized implements.
Such ingenuity keeps traffic flowing across the bay, even during the worst weather. The bridge has never been closed by snow, Mr. Moore said last week. "In winter, people always say, 'If I can make it to the Bay Bridge, I'll be OK.'
"I like that."