FORT LEE — Kevin McSweeney stood 330 feet above the Hudson River on one of four 36-inch diameter cables strung between the twin towers of the George Washington Bridge.

Manhattan-bound cars and trucks whooshed 100 feet below him as his crew of five bridge painters worked on a narrow platform. Clipped to safety wires, they used rollers to coat the cables with an aluminum-based protective layer.

It was 9 a.m. and already hot under a blazing July sun. But the small gang of adrenaline junkies applied the silvery coating with amazing speed and coordination, seemingly oblivious to the dizzying height.

McSweeney, a Marine Corps veteran and painting supervisor with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, beamed with pride.

"This is the real Port Authority," he said.

Most recent attention on the agency’s bridges and tunnels focused on last year’s controversial toll hike. Meanwhile, McSweeney and others in the structural engineering, maintenance and construction unit have quietly gone about the business of keeping the crossings in a good state of repair.

"It’s not just a job for me. I take this bridge very personally," said Greg Gasnick, a 55-year-old father of four from Park Ridge, one of the five painters on the bridge that morning.

For 26 years, Gasnick has been painting the agency’s bridges — and occasionally other tall structures, like the antennae of the original World Trade Center in 1993.

"It’s a sense of pride," Gasnick said. "Anyone on that gang will tell you, ‘That bridge is mine.’"

The bridge’s last paint job was completed in 2006, and took six years, largely because of lead paint removal. Typically, officials said, the job takes 18 months and is done every 10 years.

The George Washington, largest of the Port Authority’s four bridges, was completed in 1931 for $75 million. Its 3,500-foot single span was for years the world’s longest and accounts for most of the GWB’s overall length of 4,760 feet, linking Fort Lee and Manhattan. The twin uprights rise like 60-story skyscrapers to 635 feet above the Hudson River.

It remains the busiest bridge in the world, with more than 100 million vehicle crossings each year on its two roadways: the original, upper deck; and a lower deck completed in 1962.

The GW is also the Port Authority’s only suspension bridge. The Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing, which link New Jersey with Staten Island, are cantilever designs, supported by steel frameworks that rest on multiple pedestals. The Bayonne Bridge is famous for its massive steel arch.

The four barrel cables of the George Washington Bridge are marvels in their own right.

While their diameter makes them look like cylinders, or hollow tubes, they are, in fact, cables. Each is formed from a bundle of 61 steel ropes spun from 434 strands of .02-inch steel wire. As each strand is a mile long, if the cable’s 26,474 strands were unravelled and laid end to end, "It would go all the way around the earth," said Todd Whitehall, who joined the Port Authority as a landscaper 23 years ago, then picked up a paint brush five years later.

Whitehall, 49, of Monroe, N.Y., a senior painter, joined McSweeney in leading a tour of the bridge that included an elevator ride to the roof of New Jersey tower, followed by a harrowing walk down one of the barrel cables to the platform where Gasnick and his four sun-tanned colleagues were working near the cable’s midpoint.

High above the Palisades and well north of the Manhattan skyline, the view offers a 360-degree panorama, taking in New Jersey’s Watchung and Highlands mountains, Westchester, Connecticut, Long Island and the Sound, all of New York City, with an impressive, compressed view of New Jersey’s Gold Coast, and points beyond.

"One a clear day you can see the Catskills," Whitehall said.

The barrel cables essentially act like immense clotheslines, with the upper and lower decks hanging from them on much smaller, vertical cables known as suspender ropes. While the massive cables will remain in place, the suspender ropes will be replaced for the first time under a project scheduled to go to bid in 2014.

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To stretch nearly a mile across the Hudson from Fort Lee to Manhattan, the barrel cables are slung over huge saddles enclosed within the tops of the towers, and anchored on either shore. On the New Jersey side, the cables penetrate deep into the rocky Palisades, while a gargantuan masonry pedestal anchors the cables on the Manhattan side.

While the stationary portions of the bridge are coated with a "pewter cup gray" paint produced by Sherwin-Williams, what goes on the cables isn’t really paint, but rather an aluminum-based coating intended to remain flexible as they sway in the wind. "Technically, it never dries," Whitehall said.

Coating the cables takes 14,000 gallons of red oxide primer, plus another 12,000 gallons of aluminum paint.

The paint comes off with baby oil, said one of the painters, Keith Schmitt, who in his bandana and cutoff T-shirt looked every bit the biker that he is. Apart from riding his Harley, in his free time, Schmitt says, he likes to go rock climbing with his teenage daughter. Asked why he likes his job, Schmitt’s answer wasn’t surprising.

"The heights," he said. Then, with a sweeping gesture that took in his coworkers as well as most of the New York Metropolitan region, he added, "We’re all adrenaline junkies."

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