I’m going to take a brief break from Guam with this post. Instead I’m going to bring us up to the moment.
A few years back we had accumulated enough hail damage to our roof to make an insurance claim worthwhile. To make hail less of a problem and make the house less vulnerable to fires we put on a metal roof. In general it has been great, but it has one “feature” that I’m not real fond of. It’s slippery. In fact, I couldn’t find any shoes that had enough traction to allow me to feel safe climbing on it.
Fortunately, that hasn’t been a problem until recently. About three weeks back a wind storm blew through and all of a sudden our television reception died. As far as I could tell the antenna had been blown out of alignment. Besides not being able to climb up to it because of the slippery roof surface, nature intervened with a pattern of snow storms – not heavy snow but enough to cover the roof briefly each time.
I took advantage of a gap in the snows to climb out a window onto the top of the garage. I found out that some of my shoes have enough traction for me to climb on the metal – at least as long as I had something to hold on to. I used a long pole to bang the antenna to a new aim. Still no reception.
Things were getting desperate. The AFC championship was coming up and the Broncos were playing the Patriots. My wife Carol invited us to her sister’s house so we could watch the game. Fortunately we were welcome, and the game went to the Broncos.
That meant I had two weeks to solve the problem of the antenna. I considered hiring someone to go up and adjust it, but I didn’t want to risk someone else’s neck unnecessarily. I had found some shoes that worked on the roof. However, those same shoes didn’t seem to work on the part of the roof leading to the antenna. On top of that the drop off was two stories on one side and two and a half on the other, and Carol was adamant about me not taking the risk.
I made one more try from the garage roof. I used my snow boots and had a safety rope this time. To my surprise the snow boots had good traction. On the other hand moving the antenna did nothing to help. I decided to see if the traction was good enough for me to safely climb on the main roof.
When I got up on the ladder, I found that I had been working on the wrong problem. The antenna orientation wasn’t the problem. The cable had become disconnected from the antenna. I had to get on the roof to fix it. Nothing else would work. Still that was a long way to fall. I needed a safer way.
I figured I had a couple of possibilities. I could climb up the roof from the chimney housing. If I got into a slide it would stop me from falling off. Still that was a last resort. The other would be to get a rope over the roof and tie it off on both ends. That turned out to be easier said than done.
I took a ball of heavy twine and attached a dog-toy ball to the end of it. Then I ran the ladder up high enough that the rung I stood on was right at the edge of the roof. I didn’t have a safe place to throw from, so I spun the toy on about two feet of the string and let it go – sort of like a bolas but spun in a vertical plane. I rapidly discovered that torque messed up my aim. I also discovered that the release point had a very narrow window. Most of my throws went left of where I was aiming, and most of them hit the roof before reaching the top. Finally one throw went over the peak. Yay!
Wait a minute. It stopped. Every short throw had rolled back down like it couldn’t wait to get off the roof. Maybe a light yank would get it moving. Oops! The yank pulled it back over the peak of the roof. Here it comes down my side of the roof, and there it goes. After several more tries, I finally got it over again. This time I flicked a wave up the roof to see if that would free the toy. Most of the waves didn’t even reach the peak, and the ones that did didn’t seem to be moving the toy. Maybe more tension would help. Oh, rats! Here it comes down my side again. After a third attempt rolled past me, I knew it was time to quit for the day.
The forecast the next day was for snow starting about noon. I had to get it done that morning or else it was all over. The snow was supposed to continue off and on into the weekend. I tried another heavier ball. I kept having the same result. Then I got one over the peak … and it stopped! Nuts! I gave it a light tug, and it popped over the peak. This time it was too far left and wrapped around the furnace chimney – and stuck. Now what?
I had one more, even heavier ball left. After several attempts with it, I got it over the top. It stopped. I’m not sure what it was that triggered the idea, but something about that last failure gave me the answer. I went up on the garage roof and threw the ball onto the house roof. It rolled down on the far side where I wanted it. I used the long pole to put the string where it wouldn’t snag and pulled the rope over. I tied it off and climbed up to the antenna. My boots worked great, and I even had the right tool with me to screw the cable tightly to the antenna fitting. Success!!!
This experience showed me that real fear is exhausting. The first time on the garage roof I was holding on to anything I could get a grip on and still couldn’t shake the feeling that I was one slip away from disaster. When I got back into that upstairs bedroom, my legs felt like jelly. I made absolutely sure that cable wasn’t coming loose again in my lifetime.
GO BRONCOS!
“GO BRONCOS!”
– Sorry about that…