Welcome to the 4th Bore

The bore opened the day before at 4:10 a.m. 

 I would love to be a fly inside the cars of other families who have drive frequently through the Caldecott Tunnel. I am curious if other families have been talking about the fourth bore that has been being built for the last several years. 

In our car, our conversations have progressed over time. When they were younger, the girls asked simple questions such as "Why are they building another tunnel?" or "When will it be finished?" to more older, more mature questioning like "How are they building the tunnel?" and "How do they build through the mountain without it falling down on them?" Don is usually the one who answers and he has shared with them that when he was a boy there were only two bores. He remembers when the third bore was built when he was eight years old. 

Our family has been eagerly anticipating the opening of the fourth bore and over the past year or so the girls have (loudly) called out the new things they have noticed when we made our way west or east through the existing tunnels. 

At the beginning of the project were the first work trucks and  work signs; for a long time we weren't sure what the workers were doing but then we eventually observed the beginning of the bore when the digging began on the east side. That brought up a lot of questions and discussion! For a long time we were in awe of the huge cranes and other equipment that seemed to be a permanent part of the scenery. Then the new road on the other side began to form which brought a series of other questions such as, "What will happen to this road?" "How will the cars get over here" (there was the cement barrier blocking the work site from the active freeway). And when we first saw the opening on the west side, man, the girls were all juiced up. All that excitement from the building of a tunnel in the mountain! 

Having children opens up life in a way that is truly a gift; they bring wonder and joy from some of the most mundane things and they teach us to see the beauty in things we might normally take for granted.  Although building a tunnel through a mountain is a quite a momentous task. 

Had we not had the girls, we might have just driven on by these past few years and not noticed all the effort and hard work of that was going on in the building of the fourth bore. But children notice everything and so Don and I get to see the world through their eyes and in this instance, the fourth bored has been a topic of discussion and learning for all of us. 

So today when we drove through the new bore it was a big event. The tunnel was new, wide, modern, exciting! I am sure in the minds of a 4 and 6 year old the building of the fourth bore took forever and finally the day when we could pass on through was here.  All this from a tunnel. A simple, mundane tunnel.

Sometimes the most mundane things are the best things.

We talked about the new bore for about five minutes before our approach. Havana asked about three times if we could drive though. Both girls didn't want to miss it!