Dave Leask is mild-mannered, amicable, and loves his job. If you met him you might like him. But if you drive and are in a hurry, you may not like what he does.

From his 10-by-12 foot office, a tower perched precariously 64 feet above Salmon Bay, he opens and closes the double-leaf bascule Ballard Bridge for commercial and pleasure boats over 40 feet high, while leaving no stalled vehicles, bicyclists, or stragglers on its 218-foot expanse. The bridge's clearance is 44 feet in winter, 42 in summer. The nearby Fremont Bridge has a 30 foot clearance.

Leask, 49, is a 21-year veteran Seattle bridge operator and has been one of three chief operators for the historic Ballard Bridge for 11 years. He works for the Seattle Department of Transportation, with a 7 a.m. - 3 p.m. shift Sunday through Thursday. His first two hours include inspecting and sometimes greasing the bridge on foot, and cautiously removing garbage from the bridge that flies out of cars and trucks. He is supported by maintenance crews stationed in trailers under the bridge's north end.

While there are many professional fishermen on his father's side, he steered clear of the trade, preferring to safely guide the boats toward their bounty.

Although there is a romantic component to ruling from the tower, things can get shaky up there. "If you get a big, overweight truck, you have trouble distinguishing between the vibration it makes and an earthquake. It shakes up here all the time," said Leask of his office in the sky, located on the southeast corner of the bridge.

His cozy and solitary confines come equipped with a bathroom, half-size refrigerator, microwave oven, hot plate, and a view of the occasional peregrine falcon on the hunt. He also gets bad vibrations from the occasional driver in a hurry, when those red and white striped guard rails return upright after holding up anxious commuters for five to ten minutes.

"Sometimes they honk and flip me off as they drive by," he said. The average time the bridge takes to open and close is four minutes. But of course traffic backs up and adds to that number. Leask attempts to let Metro buses get through before he proceeds to close the gates with his control panel, displaying a colorful array of prominently labeled lighted buttons, horns, switches, and keys. Above a set of switches, a digital timer indicates how long the bridge has been up.

His presence is more welcomed by the traffic on the Bay. The password for Leask to open up is one long horn blast followed by a short toot for a pleasure boat and typically a call on Channel 13 via VHF radio from a fishing boat or other large commercial craft. "I open the bridge about three to five times per shift this time of year, and up to fifteen times on a summer day," he said, adding that once the locks open on a busy summer Sunday, many boats parade through during one bridge opening. He issues five blasts on the horn to signal "No more boats." The rule is to try to limit the openings to 10 minutes at most, but about five times a year a large craft will take slightly longer.

"We then have to call that in to keep good records in case commuters complain or we are asked if the long opening was due to a mechanical problem." Another rule is that the Ballard Bridge remains closed between 7 - 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. weekdays to accommodate rush hour traffic. "A commercial ship over a thousand gross tons is legally allowed to open the bridge during the closed period but it only happens a few times a year. If you and your crew are on a processor back from Alaska after three months at sea and have family waiting at the dock on the other side of the bridge you don't want to wait."

Unlike the many lighthouse keepers replaced by automation, Leask said bridges will always require that human touch. "Years ago they talked about controlling all bridges from Queen Anne Hill. No matter how many cameras you put on a bridge, you always need someone here. What if the gate breaks, there's a power outage, or a pedestrian on the bridge, or broken down car? You can't really replace the bridge operator."