Crane your neck

krayning! For some odd reason it gets spelled this way, but whatever way you spell it, it's awesome! Sitting up top, overlooking the beautiful city I live in, is peaceful. The loud noises of the city fade slightly and everything takes on more of a surreal quality.

On this night, the counter jib was pointing towards the financial core of Toronto, quite an impressive sight.

On the other side, the jib was pointing out towards the Portlands of Toronto, one of my fave spots int he city.

Looking north you can see the St. Lawrence market, my favourite place to get fresh meat, veggies and fruit in the city. That's Jarvis St. there stretching north. St. James park looks peaceful from up here and if you didn't know there was a camp in going on you wouldn't have a clue.

 Looking out the top of the cab towards the Gardiner Expressway, cars streaming in and out of the city.

This is the level of the cranes cab, just a short trip up one ladder to get up top. From this angle you get a view of the counter jib as well as the counter weights used to keep the crane from falling over when lifting the heavy loads.

Last nights particular adventure started with an invite to my good friend Neil Ta's birthday celebrations at Nirvana. Heading out early allowed me to stop and scratch the itch of wanting to get up on a crane. Out of all the urbexing I do, sitting way up high, over the city I love is one of my favourite parts. Climbing up is always fun and when you get up top it's like a reward. The city stretches out in all directions and glistens with twinkling lights.

I find it interesting seeing the different kinds of cranes that are being used. Sometimes they are older models and they show their age, while others are brand spanking new and glisten in the moon light. No matter what the age, they all have common features.. Generally these are things like grease and grease buckets, t.p. in the operators cab along with the relief bucket. Some cabs have pictures of families, I guess as a reminder of what they are working hard for. The workplace view is something else as well, as they get taller it only gets better.

There are quite a few projects going up across Toronto and I intend to check out as many as I can to get new and unique first views of our growing metropolis. Stay tuned for more posts on this subject.

Cheers,
Zen