Bridges

It's crazy how much our childhood influences who we become in life or what we want to be in the future. From what I remember, one of the first things I played with was LEGOs. There was something magical about how the pieces would connect to each other and the wonders of creating almost anything with my puny brain. The pieces were different colors and just like my mind, all over the place. Now, all that I have left of my LEGO days are my family's memories of stepping on some random LEGO piece on the floor and the LEGO container itself, which after 20 plus years I use as a trash bag storage.

Some time after my LEGO days, I was introduced to Hot Wheels, specifically the Jurassic Park edition. They probably stopped making this and unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of it, but if I remember correctly and hopefully talking about the right Hot Wheels track, the main piece of the track consists of a building or dinosaur as well as a toll way gate arm, where you can pull back the gate arm, place your car in front of it, and press some button to release the spring mechanism to send your car flying. The fun part was making your own expressway. Using the red tracks they provide, you can connect them together any way you like and put supports underneath for the higher roadways in order to create your Hot Wheels masterpiece. It was awesome.

Time passed and my puny brain grew a little bigger. I found out about Bionicles and at that time, I was capable of reading and following instructions. For those who aren't familiar with Bionicles, a picture is provided below.

They were basically figurines that you can create on your own piece by piece, using a booklet that provided visual step by step instructions. Towards the end of the booklet, they showed you how to make the ultimate combined Bionicle if you had maybe three Bionicles from the same group, which I don't have by looking at the different containers. But of course, this was a trap and understandable for business, but that's when the LEGO creativity comes into play. If you have a variety of Bionicles already, you can create anything you want, it just depends on your imaginative mind.

Skip maybe 10 years, which leads us to a time a little before high school. My family moved to a new home and I had to leave my friends and start life at a new high school. Everybody knew each other from junior high and then, there was me. I was shy so I didn't talk that much or made any friends, so I went to class, did my work, and went straight home. I found comfort at home and I spent most of my time crafting with popsicle sticks. The reason I like popsicle sticks is because they had so much resemblance to LEGOs and Bionicles. Simple pieces that can be built into something amazing.

I started crafting with popsicle sticks the Christmas before I started high school. My cousins and I had a white elephant exchange and I made them this 2D Eiffel Tower out of popsicle sticks. I intended to make a 3D Eiffel Tower for myself, so four 2D Eiffel Towers were made for each side. It looked nice separately, but when I tried to put them together, it didn't look right, so I gave two Eiffel Towers as gifts and kept one for myself. Who knows what I did with the last tower, but I attached strings, for hanging purposes, on the ones I planned to give as gifts, but little did I know that after awhile, the glue that I used wasn't strong enough and the Eiffel Tower fell apart because it was so fragile. However, from there, my free time after classes was making popsicle stick projects.

My first major project was the Golden Gate Bridge. The Hot Wheels Expressway was the starting point. Then, as I grew older I would drive and see Texas highway systems getting constructed and it just fascinated me. Driving on Texas highways or any highways being constructed is a pain to drive through, but when you're under it and you see highways way up in the air, all over the place, swinging left and right, it's crazy. It's basically Hot Wheels in real life. And when you look at it, it gets you thinking. We, humans, are incredible. We created something so majestic and it helps us get from one point to another. Then POOF!, I get the idea of making the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a well known bridge in the United States and I've been there with my family when I was young. An absolutely beautiful bridge. Also, fairly simple to build. Not much cutting for this project except for the support detail at the bottom. Toothpicks were used for the curved suspension cable and these long, flexible crafting sticks were used for the vertical suspenders.

My next project was the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia. I always wanted to move to Australia. It just seems like a cool, chill place to be minus the giant spiders and saltwater crocodiles. Plus, you know, Finding Nemo. So, in a sense, to get "closer" to Australia and as a constant reminder to not give up my desire to move there, I decided to make the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

It was a little before I started college at Aggieland, in order to begin my journey as an engineer, was when I began this project. I wanted something challenging and I thought that the Aussie bridge was a perfect fit. At this point, I knew how to draw from my art classes and measure from my woodshop class from high school, so I was very meticulous about this project. I looked up pictures of the bridge; trying to find detailed pictures of everything from top to bottom and once I found what I needed, I began constructing.

I used popsicle sticks, a pair of scissors, rulers, utility knife, a small hacksaw, and glue gun for this endeavor. I started off with the road, like I did with the Golden Gate Bridge. One regret was that I didn't try cutting the popsicle sticks into perfect rectangular popsicle sticks to make the road flush with one another, so gaps are present from the curved ends of the popsicle sticks. Next, I worked on the towers. I planned and drew them out before cutting, using the utility knife to cut tiny pieces or any detailed sections. The scissor was mainly used to cut the popsicle sticks to exact measurements as well as cut the ends of the popsicle sticks to have a flush, clean look. Unfortunately, using the scissor cracked the popsicle stick sometimes and applying the necessary pressure to cut through a popsicle stick was painful on the fingers, so a small hacksaw was used as its replacement at times. Once everything was cut, I glued them together.

Afterwards, I attached it to the road that was made in the beginning and started on the top part of the tower, using the same methods as the bottom. Once they were done, it was glued onto the road.

Eventually, I started on the arches. This part was a bit difficult because I had to cut the pieces of the arches the right angle and I didn't have the right tool to cut it with precision. Also, the fact that I wanted to make the arches look good in general. Gluing made it challenging as well because the glue gun was so hot that the pieces would fall apart. I had to hold them together at the right angle until it cooled off and hardened, which was time consuming since the arches are comprised of different pieces and there were multiples arches that had to be made. Eventually, the arches was accomplished and I was happy. It looked amazing.

This project actually took a couple years to get to this point since I've been working on and off due to being away from home to focus on my studies. Even though it's not done, I'm still proud of it every time I walk into my room and I'm thankful for Vocal for this challenge. I'm actually surprised that I had pictures from when I was building it with the red scissors in the photos. Talk about lucky. But thank you for letting me share my work with y'all. I really appreciate it.