CLOUDSDALE — The Canterlot Council put eleven ribbon-cuttings and 40 million bits on this week's works calendar, every stop inside a district where its slate sits inside four points. The projects office called the run a weather and sport buildout. On the midnight desk the job is one cloud, serial CR-14, logged on the fourteenth of Frostfall.
Windfall Margin, director of the Council Works Foundry, read three names from a podium bolted to that cloud: Baltimare Holding Cloud, Vanhoover Civic Reservoir, Trottingham Assurance Basin. The night log Gale Report keeps lists one coordinate for all three, a capacity of 60 million gallons if the updraft holds over 12 knots, and a Tuesday holding of 41 million gallons. The tour packet lists three groundbreakings. No work order has been opened on CR-14 in eleven months.
"We logged it on Frostfall fourteenth," Gale Report said. She has run the late shift for nine seasons. "They hung 1,200 hooves of ribbon off the downwind lip and took my only two riggers off a watch. That watch was a 30-knot line for the Baltimare stacks, due at 02:10. I marked the crew pulled for ceremony."
The line came through at 02:40. Hail the size of bottle caps beat the stack roofs for six minutes. A dawn note from the projects office filed the gap as a ceremonial hold and moved the Baltimare ribbon to Thursday. Baltimare votes in eleven days. On the foundry tally stapled behind the ribbon order, the Council slate there trails by 3 points.
Vanhoover votes in nine days. Trottingham votes in six. Both orders carry serial CR-14 under the local names. Margin told the crowd on the cloud that the basins were phased sister installations sharing a sky. He read one capacity and one gallon count. A surveyor off the late shift chalked the logged position on the podium leg while the band tuned: the range relay, neutral air, 14 miles from the nearest grandstand set up for the pictures.
"Ponies fund what they can stand under," Windfall Margin said. He has held the foundry through four slates. "A ribbon is how a district recognizes its cloud. We are bringing that recognition to the districts on this calendar."
The calendar matches the slate card stop for stop. The route runs through the towns inside four points. Gallopford, where the slate leads by 18, stays home. Dodge Junction, with one name on the ballot, stays home. The band wagon carries three backdrops, three water towers, and one cloud.
At Vanhoover the sport line is a straightaway cover bid at 6.2 million bits in spring and restated Tuesday at 9.4 million. The shack chart puts completion at 22 percent. Four ponies were on the cover at midday. One was painting the Council crest back onto the scaffold. The pylon plate rates the lane for wind at or under 8 knots. The Sunflower Stakes card in the same packet lists a 15-knot tail for the last furlong and a Wonderbolt demonstration at the ribbon.
August Pell, for the Wonderbolt press office, released the demonstration as flown. The placing sheet names one finisher and leaves the time blank. Sedge Marlow is third reserve, lane 4, on the heat sheet the crews held, and "display" on the caption sent an hour before the start. She has four starts on the east team.
"The south pylon is still guyed with hay-baling twine," Sedge Marlow said. She kept the guy through the anthem. It slipped twice. "I said that before they sent the sheet. They wanted the caption to read nearing completion. The twine is what is holding the rating plate. Left forewing has the burn. The corps has me day-to-day. I never started. Their sheet has me placed."
The night book enters it under the ceremonial hold: left forewing, S. Marlow, reserve, no time, display. Asked for the wind in the lane, Pell's office sent back the stakes card with the 15-knot tail circled.
Trottingham reused the shovel from a groundbreaking fourteen months ago, with a new bow on the handle. Speeches ran 40 minutes. The week's rigger list is blank. Gale's crew, still two short, re-hung the ribbon so it would sit in frame from the Trottingham stand in an updraft under 10 knots. At 11 knots it bellied and showed the chalk.
The packet prices the tour at 40 million bits and lists the sum as new works. Frostfall already appropriated 38.4 million for CR-14, the Vanhoover cover, and the Baltimare lattice. Travel, bunting, backdrop paint, and the band this week came to 612,000 bits.
New construction bits released this week: 0.
